


Ancillary

by skellerbvvt



Series: Gasoline Family [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Animal Death, Asexual Character, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2018-11-22 05:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 52,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11373306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skellerbvvt/pseuds/skellerbvvt
Summary: Bucky almost started looking at their boots. Being a Howler guaranteed you the top grade. They even got the original pork shoulder SPAM to choke on, instead of off-brand. The first few cans had been a relief. The next hundred, less so.Next to Bucky’s feet was a breathing fella, eyes cracked open and watering. Head caved in around a rock. He smelled a few more agonizing hours from death unless it got cold enough. No fear stench. The fear stench was good, in its own way. Like somebody swallowing wrong and then getting enough air to cough. It was when you had the wet, airless choke a fella had cause to worry.No boots. To the victor'd already gone the spoils.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Look. I know a series that hasn't been updated for over a year has no cause to be posting a WIP. But I've got 30k of this monster and all I'm doing is editing and re-editing and sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
> 
> So cue: "Take a Chance On Me" by Abba and let's go for a ride, we weary, ready few.
> 
> Also the Animal Death tagged is chickens. There are chickens, and they are eaten. Proceed as one will.

[ **January 1945]**

You could read the papers if you wanted to know about the battles. That’s why folks kept getting into wars, Bucky figured. When they'd buried everyone,  the only remainder were the baseball stats. He’d read about the Revolutionary War like anybody, and his eyes'd passed right by the death toll of Valley Forge. A number that big couldn’t get into the brain. One body was a story. A thousand bodies was a report.

 

The Howler’s had stumbled over the site of a skirmish. It’d been...hmm. A day or two old, what with crows still working on the soft parts of the skull. The stiffs'd gone going bluish-green and the scent of urine gone stale. Flies crowding over the scent of shit.

 

Steve’d stood there, forcing himself to see.  Must have been early on, with the touch and green around the firmed jaw. Bucky wanted to tell him it was the smell that was the worst part. It’s why plague doctors used to stuff their masks with herbs and spices. They'd thought the smell carried the sickness. With the same working information, Bucky would’ve thought the same.

 

You could get used to it, though, if you had to. Back in Zola's cells there'd been two dead bodies they'd rolled off to the side. No blankets for even a mockery burial. They’d rotted together, which had been a sort of kindness. Being buried alone was for criminals. Skin blistering up after a few days, bloating up and- well. Bucky’d been sick enough that’d he’d seen the image of himself in the same state hanging behind his eyelids.

 

Dum Dum’d taken off his hat. Jones'd gone to see if there was anybody left to salvage.

 

Bucky almost started looking at their boots. Being a Howler guaranteed you the top grade. They even got the original pork shoulder SPAM to choke on, instead of off-brand. The first few cans had been a relief. The next hundred, less so.

 

Next to Bucky’s feet was a breathing fella, eyes cracked open and watering. Head caved in around a rock. He smelled a few more agonizing hours from death, unless it got cold enough. No fear stench. Fear stench was good, in its own way. Like somebody swallowing wrong and then getting enough air to cough. It was when you had the wet, airless choke a fella had cause to worry.

 

No boots. To the victor'd already gone the spoils.  

 

Bucky’d crouched down and carded sticky hair from their face. Skin was cold, almost out of blood. Church'd always said that those who died in the service of their family would see the gates of heaven. Good, hardy auxiliaries might become God’s servants. Get to see their breeding pair live in eternal bliss. Egyptians used to kill the Pharaohs' primary to bury with them. So Anubis would weigh 'em against a feather and see their good works.  

 

He'd nudged the fella over, off the rock with a squelch and a thud. The bleeding hadn’t started up again, even with their skull all spongy. He’d looked up over the field, and most of the Howlers had looked at one another and started digging. There were guidelines in the Army manual about how to bury comrades. It said to bury them under a tree, or near a rail line, but neither were on offer.

 

“Steve,” and Steve’s attention'd snapped into place, “mark where we are. We can put this on a map to get these bones home when things calm down. Who wants to collect names?”

 

Morita’d taken a piece of paper and started on dog tag rubbings. He marked the rubbings with blue or red crosses, muttering some kinda prayer as he went. If nothing else they could get some death notices out. You wanted to leave ‘em with their dog tags, so at least they'd rot with their names, if not under them.

 

Jones and he'd taken the duty of dispatching the blank-eyed all-but survivors. Were only a few. The rest of the Howler’s started digging. A nice pack-grave so fellas could curl in together in death. They dug two, for the Germans and the English.

 

If there were a worse haul than moving old bodies, Bucky hadn't found it in his decade on the support circuit. No ceremony to it. You grabbed 'em by the boots and dragged. In some cases, assembling limbs as they went.

 

Steve hadn’t had a speech in him. None of 'em had wanted to smoke, but they'd passed a flask around. He’d driven two sheared stones into the dirt, tall and proud. Morita’s closed his notebook and tucked it away in his pack. The rest of ‘em had stood with blood and dirt under their nails. Jones had given last rites, pulling them into _Amazing Grace//La Grace du Ciel_ after a moment. Then they’d been off again. Left, right, left, right and nobody saying nothing.

 

They’d found HYDRA. They’d buried them after.

 

And what’d the papers say when they’d gotten back?

 

> **CAPTAIN’S COMMANDOS HAVE NAZI’S “HOWLING” IN FEAR!**

 

and

 

> **CAPTAIN AMERICA SHIELDS HOME SHORES FROM INVASION ATTEMPT!**

 

Papers had glossed over the details, focusing on the victory. And the pictures. There were plenty of posters of them, these days.  Some with Steve’s mug under his dumb cowl: **SOCK OL’ HILTER IN THE JAW: BUY WAR BONDS.** Steve looking rugged and stoic, one finger to his lips while the bottom said: **HELP CAP, SHUT YOUR TRAP!**

 

Bucky wasn’t gonna be the fella to get worked up about the lies papers needed to run to keep folks hopeful. He didn’t much like seeing his face next to ‘em, was all. So he’d read antiperspirant ads for a **FRESH, STRESS-FREE SCENT.  E** ggless sponge cake recipes, and how to best tend your victory garden. Somehow Stark always had a fresh paper, like he had an intercontinental newsie.

 

Bucky’d look at the little lay-out graphs and his brain’d wander off.  Picturing him and Steve tending some little fire-escape garden. It was bad enough before the war, all this wanting to feed Steve. Got no better when the lunk was lifting trucks, breath soured with hunger. .

 

Steve’d look at the headlines like he wanted to say something. Except it was like the cartoons before the feature film. Did it help? A little? Shut the hell up about it, then.

 

Last he'd heard, there'd been talks of a radio play. Bucky’d signed so many damn papers after Steve’d hand-picked him that he was pretty sure he didn't own his own shit. Sure, he didn't own his image. They'd printed it on all kinds of everything spitting their way out to homes across America. Bucky's face plastered over recipes of bread stuffing balls, or potato rarebit.

 

> **You wouldn’t let your fella go hungry… HELP FEED OUR TROOPS** the press release’d said.

 

“Look at you, Dugan. A trophy auxiliary at last,” Jones’d held up the poster of Dum Dum. It was him chewing on a cigar with his Winchester Trench, and that'd been a pain to get. Someone in the background with a rivet gun, the bottom declaring: **HIT THEM WITH BOTH BARRELS.**

 

And Steve Goddamn Rogers led the whole thing. Little omega Stevie scrapping on the schoolyard. And somebody would look at Bucky and said: _“Ain’t omegas supposed to be peaceful?”_

Bucky coulda warned 'em, but nobody’d asked.

 

What Bucky remembered best were...well sure. The raids. Jones and Bucky had to whip up the reports on those. (Which, strictly speaking, was Steve's job, but boy was Steve's take on a raid different than made any sort of sense.) But they'd crawl into his head and back onto the paper. Died in some newspaper, redacted to Hell and back.

 

He had a better memory for what happened between reports. One fight with HYDRA was a lot like any other. What mattered was the  standing on top of the bluff with Steve, looking at the zipline. Shooting the shit and thinking about Zola in a cell.

 

Not the plummet down.

 

* * *

 

[ **November 1943]**

Steve made plans so stupid nobody woulda thought to prevent them. Which was… some sorta tactical genius.  Don't want your dowry shuffled in with the rest of the infantry? Scent mark on him so good that it shone a spotlight until something reflected back. Want to get into an army that wouldn’t take you? Experimental human augmentation was easier than hooking an alpha groomed for command.

 

Want to rescue an entire infantry unit? One-man para-rescue team minus the parachute. Any spotter would’ve thought Steve’s parachute failed. HYDRA sure hadn’t been expecting a jailbreak headed by half a breeding pair. In tights.

 

HYDRA goons’d been shooting _at_ the German regiment when they’d taken the 107th. Which either meant they’d run out of hunting on their own stomping grounds, or they were going to fight the world. On the life of the Barren Mary, Bucky’d no idea how they were gonna run combat logistics with that kinda rescue.

 

They had a 3, 6, 9 and noon. A spotter in every cluster of the pack. One driver and one spotter to six sick folks. Some weapons, sure, and a bunch of a folk a good spook away from getting their blood up.

 

Weren’t a soul who questioned whether Steve should be running the op. Which was either a blessing, or how tired and raw nerved the 400-odd fellas were. They’d packed away whole-lungfuls of Steve and fallen into order.

 

Steve didn’t ask him what he’d been doing on that table. Bucky didn’t ask him if he’d crawled out of his old body like a snake. Instead, Bucky kept walking point. Steve doubled back to shepherd the entire mess.

 

Bucky’d seen this political cartoon once. It'd been showing a big dirty border collie, you know. A big ol'e pack of pups with happy, lolling tongues all wall-eyed and dumb. Another anti-immigration piece of shit. And they'd been crawling into the packed bed of America with the caption: **GOT ROOM FOR ONE MORE**? Bucky’d been mad enough to go to the library and track down what other breeds of Irish dogs there were. Found out about the Irish Wolfhound’d and how they used to rip soldiers off horses and felt better about the mix of it.

 

Sergeant Barnes kept his feet moving. Kept his brain thinking about ambush spots, instead of a warm place to sleep, or a good dinner. They’d stolen the food they could, when they’d all headed out. And they weren’t gonna start lighting fires out here and get themselves killed.

 

He kept smelling turkey roasting. Strong enough that if they crested the hill they’d find themselves in the Barnes kitchen. Head of Household would butterfly the bird to roast it. She'd taught Bucky how to cut out the spine and wishbone, cover the skin thick with salt to rest. It had to be dry to get a good, crispy skin, and leaving the bones in was a waste, especially when there was stock to make.

 

She’d have the rest of ‘em peeling carrots, cutting up onions, quartered parsnips. If you wanted to eat in the Barnes' household then Little Red Hen rules applied.

 

If a dream were a thing a fella could eat, Bucky woulda poisoned himself years ago. He turned his head back and scented harder, but it kept being a note on the wind.

 

Dum Dum sidled up and fell into step. Looking a little worse for wear, but trooping along. He was a good showman, Dum Dum. Sometimes you could almost forget he’d been bailing out the same boat you’d been.

 

“You smell that?” Bucky opened his mouth a little to get the air over his tongue. Cooking smells meant people, and they couldn’t afford to wander into nobody. Except he was the kind of hungry that you could tap a tin spoon on his stomach and hear a clang.

 

“You smell somebody?” Dum Dum scented the air, “gunpowder? Smoke?”

 

Bucky rubbed his nose, trying to snort out the turkey scent. The next few breathes he got were wet dirt and the winter snap. Bucky looks back, and nobody else is scenting down food. “You got a better nose than me for all this nature."

 

"I have seen a tree or two in my time," Dum Dum agreed and watched him keep scenting the air and whistled between his teeth. Some kid from the Western territories had to teach them bird calls. Bucky had an alright turkey gobble, but that weren’t much use out here. They waited a beat. They heard a more distant call of the closest scouts, and after a minute, the all clear call back.

 

“You doing alright there, pal?”

 

Bucky pinched the bridge of his nose between his knuckles. Bucky had nothing to say, or, no. Bucky had no words in him. He grabbed at the worn paper of Sergeant James Barnes, but that weren't there either.

 

Dum Dum let the silence be it’s own animal for a second, before it ran off on it’s own.

 

“So Rogers ain’t attached,” Dum Dum picked up their conversation from where Bucky’d tried to shoot it dead. “He ain’t got a claim mark. Don’t smell like nobody, and he sure don’t act like a widower.”

 

Bucky kept walking, jaw clamped down around a whole bunch of questions he’d never had a chance to ask anybody. When they’d lived in the tenement the whole building’d been so thick with bed-scent nobody'd noticed one more. And Steve Rogers, he was such a little fella, with such an overprotective dowry. Poor thing got sick after his lure and that Barnes fella chasing all comers off the block.

 

It hadn’t been a very well guarded secret, but weren’t any better security than anonymity.

 

“So either he _ain’t_ the fellow who left you the talk of the town, or I’m missing something.” Dum Dum dug a cigarette pack out of his vest pocket and offered a smoke to Bucky.

 

“I’ve seen how you shoot, so you know where my money is.” Bucky took the cigarette and leaned in as Dum Dum lit it up for him, keeping the feeling smooth and easy. Dum Dum was the sort of fella who could make friends in a dog pit.

 

Bucky picked Steve's voice from the rumble and sway. Dum Dum kept his eyes on the underbrush and Bucky watched the sway of the trees.

 

“I’m not asking for a heart to heart here, Barnes. If you need some flim-flam gumming up the rumor mill, then I’d be more than happy for you to owe me one.”

 

“Last I figured you owed me at least twenty,” Bucky rubbed at his chest. He shouldn’t be able to smoke. Every time Steve’d had pneumonia it’d hung around for a few weeks, made him rattle.

 

“And I’d as soon owe you nineteen instead,” Dum Dum’d agreed.

 

Bucky’d watched the smoke trail along behind them, coming out of him smooth as glass.

 

“The other fellas don’t know anything, or are keeping their traps shut,” Dum Dum mused. Anybody else it might’ve been a threat, but there was something about helping a fella not bleed out together that smoothed out the rough edges of conversation.

 

“Some figure his better half is back at camp. Some don’t know how to scent out a widower and figure he’s got a deathwish. Plenty are too tired to care one way or another.”

 

Bucky rubbed his chin. “Anybody know much about me?”

 

Dum Dum took Bucky’s cigarette, ashing into dirt. His cigar stayed unlit between his fingers. He tossed the cigarette butt to the dirt. Took care to snuff it out proper with his boot, even though plenty of folks would trample it in a minute.

 

“They know you’re brass. Some know about your speciality.” Dum Dum stroked his mustache. He needed some pomade. Out in the field he used to keep it neat. He'd look in a scrap of a field mirror and brush through with beeswax.  A fella had a signature style and so went God’s eye on the sparrow.

 

“How many know how I rolled into camp?”

 

“One or two,” Dum Dum said, all friendly, “none willing to say much. Oh, they’d heard a rumor a while back, but didn’t Sergeant Barnes fight the guards at camp? And didn’t Sergeant Barnes volunteer himself for testing to save somebody? And didn’t Captain America himself swing in to save us all and say his name? Must all be horseshit, huh?”

 

Bucky licked his lips, and watched the treeline. “No one’s bitter?”

 

“Sweet as Christmas morning,” Dum Dum agreed, “if they think we got saved on account of you? That would grease plenty of wheels. Hell, some boys would be willing to throw over their own Head of House.”

 

They walked on. Dum Dum put his unlit cigar back in his bag and worried at his mustache.

 

“Cap gets the spotlight,” Bucky decided, a moment hanging in the thin winter sunlight. He ain’t ever wanted much notice, all said. Snipers got some, but they were the folk who could peel off from the group and suffer it.

 

Steve’s voice got closer.

 

Dum Dum took Bucky by the shoulder, squeezed, and started tweaking the gossip machine.

 

* * *

 

[ **Who Knows Where]**

 

> **(Nurses) Packing List Suggestions**
> 
>   * ****Trunk locker (weight limit 85 lbs). Bedding roll (not over 50 lbs.) One pieces of hand luggage (not over 40 lbs) 1 field bag. Each individual must have a duffle bag to be placed inside bedding roll. Total not to exceed 175 lbs in weight. Your field bag will serve as an overnight or emergency kit.****
> 

>   * **When packing consider yours needs for the voyage. These are to be packed in your handbag or field bag. These two pieces are to be taken with you aboard ship. Note: you will be toting your own bag, so bear that in mind. Your foot lockers and bedding rolls will be stowed in the hold of the ship and will not be accessible**
> 

>   * **On boarding the ship the uniform will include OF winter uniform, gas mask, helmet, field bag, and pistol belt with first aid pouch, side arm, and canteen. The field coat and handbag are all that will be carried unless you have a musical instrument that you wish to take. When traveling to port dress in full uniform and remember that you do not appear as an individual, but are representing the Corps. The public observes you closely and critically.**
> 

>   * **We will see you at the port-remember security, both yourself and your unit. If family is escorting you, do not say “Goodbye” as such a remark always invites questions. Listed below are things you may be wondering about”**
> 

> 
> **Cosmetics - and any liquids having an alcoholic content will not go into your hold luggage, but will be carried in your hand luggage. Be sure to take plenty of lip stick.**
> 
> **Comfort items - It is advised to keep small, district comfort items if necessary. Col. Martha Clements has suggested that each nurse take a few yards of some gay material with which to brighten their quarters. Also a plate, cup, saucer, knife, fork and spoon to use in supplying the Rec Hall.**
> 
> **Watch - Can you depend on yours?**
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

[ **January, 1944]**

They’d been marching across…must’ve been Italy, given how sunny it was. Had them deep clouds out, the kind that you could almost see over and made the sky look bluer. Kind of clouds with sixteen different shades of white curling up around themselves. Not that matte grey British sky.

 

He could see Steve glancing up at them from time to time.

 

Boy, did Steve have the whole word fooled on that one. You know some dumb mug journalist…ha! That was it. Goddamn _Casey Spencer: War Correspondent_ , wrote about how:

 

> “Captain America has a singular glance. You can see the tactician in him as he enters a room. It is as if every object has been weighed and measured in his mind before he has even grasped your hand. This, I believe, more than the weight of his mighty shield, or his heroic build, is the mark of a true American Hero.”

 

Bucky’d snorted into his boiled hickory because sure. Alright. Steve, when attacked, would find the nearest thing and throw it up between him and the enemy.

 

Steve had himself a gift when it came to finding improvised weaponry. A fella could give him every weapon in the arsenal and he’d go after somebody with a table. Nothing around? He threw himself at the target. Lobbed himself behind his shield like a goddamn weaponized _turtle_.

 

But if Bucky’d been the overprotective sort, Steve’d’ve left him for some enabling trash bin ages ago. Steve needed a real fine line between Head of Household and a bottle of gin. Bucky was all in on Steve being a reckless piece of shit. But. Well Stakes went up and the House was betting with a real mean sorta smile.

 

Thank the sweet nurturing Barren Mary, Steve’d made his first mission getting himself the Howlers. The Howlers who taught him what all he missed being a camp show monkey.

 

Training like: “jumping on top of fragment grenade don’t make a hero. Coats the shrapnel in idiot, is all."

 

(Bucky'd near slapped Steve upside the head, best pal or not. Steve'd at least looked sheepish.

 

"S'what they do in the movies." He'd said.

 

"Yeah, the movies. You know they ain't allowed to show those unless they're 100% accurate. S'why a tommy gun sounds like beans on a tin roof." Bucky'd gripped the side of Steve's head. "And everybody talks with a newscaster accent huh? Huh? Why we see Ginger Rogers floating her way up Main Street without stepping in horse shit.")

 

Basic army knowledge and lead-headed fighting aside,  when Steve entered a room? Mr. Casey Spencer, just so you knew, Captain America was checking it for _shading_. Shoulda seen the doodles the fella'd make during every war room meeting.

 

Most of...of Agent Carter, sure. Some furniture. Bucky, if he was on offer, but Steve drawn so much of Bucky over the years it had to be a warm-up exercise at this point. He'd draw chairs in the margins of scout notes. Doodle her goddamn victory curls and perfect, _perfect_ flipstick in any blank space he could find. Anyways.

 

Like in Italy, with the chickens. You think Captain America was pondering the sky looking for oncoming air assaults? Nope, he was halfway to dreamland with a paintbrush, was what he was. You could...could see his fingers flex and twitch a little as he got real into it. Weren’t a single beautiful thing in this whole damned earth Steve didn’t want to put onto paper.

 

“Heavens, are those chickens?” Falsworth said because Bucky’d been staring at the back of Steve’s head, half a step inside it, and half a step ready to shoot a noise if it looked at him wrong.

 

They’d all stopped. There was an abandoned ransacked farm down off the side of the cliff, looking like a burned up postcard.

 

Roosting, calm as you please, along the bluff were five chickens.

 

Dum Dum’d raised his gun and Morita had slapped it down. “Whaddya doing? You’ll scare them off.”

 

So they marched down to get a better look at the situation.

 

Real life chickens didn’t look right. Not like in the funnies, or in the stockyards by the docks. Not all fat and fluffy and clucking. Or even dirty, fat and clucking. Closer they got, the easier it was to see these were birds strung together with beaks and spite. Scraggy talons and dirt-beat feathers.

 

The Howlers all looked at each other.

 

“Sure would be nice having a real dinner,” Jones said. He’d had himself a Head of Household who’d known how to cook stuff up like the magazines. He’d grown up in New York and said he’d invite the lot of them over for Sunday dinner. Bucky called him college man and figured he’d been living off toast and cigarettes for the last two years. Jones, a cup of coffee, and six thick books.

 

“It’d be a Hell of a thing to eat meat that might’ve come from an animal,” Dum Dum agreed. Dum Dum was a fella who appreciated the good things. Cigars, steak, bourbon. Had a great sense of direction, seeing as he’d grown up on the twisting brick streets of Boston. They could go to any ole' city and he'd find them a way through it. Which, sure, was part of how he could make friends under a rock, but the two together served them well.

 

Dernier’s hand twitched a little too close to a grenade for comfort. Said something in French. Bucky picked up “small,” because he wasn’t a moron, and “explosion” because that was the same word English or French.

 

Jones got Dernier's wrist.

 

“What’s the plan, then, fellas?” Steve asked, corner of his mouth tucked into a smile.

  
  
Bucky started whistling the _Star Spangled Man with A Plan_. because they’d played one of his films for a USO show.

 

(Steve’d put his head in his hands and just quietly chanted “Kill me, Buck. Kill me quick before I start the speech.”

 

Bucky’d hollered, “Hold on, there’s a speech!” And the room had cheered and Bucky’d laughed so hard he thought they’d have to put a bullet in him to get it to stop. Steve’d peeked from between his fingers and shook silently along with.)

 

Steve raised his eyebrows. Both of ‘em, like he’d like to borrow somebody’s else’s and raise theirs for good measure.

 

“Oh who me? I don’t got plans. I’m a poor green schmuck from the heart of Brooklyn. Poor little omega me don’t know a blessed _thing_ about that rough and tumble _survival_ stuff.” Steve sat down and pulled out his sketchbook on account of how he was a piece of _shit_ .  
  
The Howlers looked at one another.

 

They were five of the stringiest leftovers God let shit on earth. When they’d tried the soft approach the chickens near pecked Falsworth’s finger off.

 

Steve coulda jumped up there or grabbed one, but what was he doing? Sitting up on a rock and sketching the whole damn scene.

 

(“Firestarter, huh?” Dum Dum’d said the first time he’d seen Steve sketching a goddamn sunrise like they were on a honeymoon to Paris.

 

“Shaddup.” Bucky’d said, wanting a shave more than a crucified Jesus Christ’d wanted water.

 

Wouldn’t ya know it, the rest of the Howlers got themselves in the habit too. Packing away paper from whatever they could find and sticking it in Steve’s pack. He didn’t say nothing. They didn’t say nothing. But it was nice, ya know, listening to him sketch.

 

Better than seeing the poor clown learning how to throw that damn shield. It was a tragedy, was what it was. Bucky’d point it out a million times, say: “Here’s the headwind, you throw it there, it ricochets there and boom. Two birds, one shield.”

 

“Sure.” Steve’d say and he was still seeing it in flat charcoal stills, God help them all.)

 

There’d been the remains of some other chickens in the woods on the way up. Burned out camp fires with sucked out bones about a half mile away.

 

The cussed, stubborn chickens didn’t know the Howlers were that much more cussed. Be a damn sight, though, if some journalist caught America’s best strike team getting outfoxed by a pack of hens.

 

Morita'd said you could scoop them up by their legs. Bucky’d asked him to prove it. He’d shrugged: “Not like I’ve _done_ it. Saw it in a Western, once.”

 

Bucky’d unstrapped his rifle, took the capping off, loaded and aimed.

 

“We already said that’d scare them off,” Steve said.

 

“Can’t scare the dead,” Bucky’d said back. “Unless you want to try your shield at it. Lord knows you need the practice.”

 

Steve, still sore about Bucky giving him guff about his aim,  waved him off.

 

The chickens scratched at the ground, heads bobbing.

 

“These runts better taste good.” Bucky’d said, lined up the shot, and fired.

 

He hit dead on, sure enough. Knew it as soon as he fired. He woulda felt pretty good about it, except that the chicken exploded all over Jones.

 

The rest of the Howlers hollered like a sports commentators: “What the hell?”

 

Jones looked down at his chicken-bit drenched self. He made the sort of noise that happens when all your curses get sort of bottlenecked on their way out. At least he didn't go thinking he'd gotten shot.

 

That was the thing about Jones, though, never let a bad beat get him down. What’d he do? He stripped off his jacket and goddamn leapt up the wall. He pounced on one of the useless runts like something out of one of Bucky’s pulp novels.

 

“What did Stark do to that thing?” Dum Dum’d shouted at the same time, on the skirts of the splash zone.

 

(After Steve’d gotten them out, they’d deliver HYDRA weapons right on over to Stark. He was trying to figure out how they ticked. If the G.I.’s got some of those future guns, all those papers' would change. Bucky could just picture that scene from _Gone With The Wind_ with Scarlett in a panoramic theatre of bodies, right? Lost, dying auxiliaires all keening out for a nurse, and reaching for each other. Only with HYDRA guns it'd be her standing there in the fire and the nothing.

 

Bucky'd thought about that scene plenty since shipping out.)

 

Now, Bucky’d seen seagulls in a frenzy, over fries and hot dogs. They had nothing on vengeful war zone chickens  scrambling down a burned-up rock. They were screaming and clawing.

 

Jones got one by a leg and swung it around over his head until it stopped moving. Morita wrung another’s neck sorta on accident.

 

Steve ended up punching one, which Bucky was sort of surprised it didn’t explode. It sure weren’t chicken shaped afterward. Steve didn’t even shake out his hand. Steve weren’t ever afraid to throw a punch, or better, full body tackle some deadend for talking about they should bring some of them Nazi ideal over the America.

 

(“It’s a free country and if I want to warn my fellow Aryans of the dangers of the Jew, then that’s my right,” some frothing white fella would say, homebrew pamphlets in his hands, and on the ground where she’d lost her grip.

 

“Uncle Sam won’t say nothing, but if you think any good America is gonna stand by while you drag their neighbors through the mud-” Steve’s started in.

 

Bucky’d leaned against the doorway of the bodega and asked the shopkeep if she might have her bucket of waste water handy. Then while the fella wound up to give Steve what-for, Bucky'd stepped to the side, waited for passer-bys to clear, and then cheerfully dumped the water over her head.

 

Steve’d taken the pamphlets. They’d tossed ‘em into the first fire they’d found.

 

Steve’d been riled all the way up to the top of Everest but Bucky’d always figured that a sock to the jaw gave somebody a foothold. Bucket of water? Made him a joke.

 

Steve’d always been a little black-and-white about some things: either you could argue them into agreement, or you punch ‘em until they couldn’t hurt nobody. Which, well, if there was a kind of brain made to win a war, Bucky supposed it’d be that one.)

 

Steve’d then called Bucky "Davy Crockett" on account of him being an asshole. Jones bemoaned the lack of cola to get the stains out. Weren’t the first time they’d had to get blood out of their clothes, sure, but it was something about it being chicken blood that changed the conversation a little.

 

“Head of Household always used cornstarch,” Morita said, turning and digging through his bag. “Do we got cornstarch?”

 

“No, cold salt water,” Dum Dum said, “You gotta get it in there fast and soak it for a few hours, but it won’t set,” at the same time Falsworth was talking about just rinsing cold water over it. Dernier was digging in his pack for something and held up a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, and then everybody yelled about bleaching the damn thing.

  
One time Steve’d gotten a nosebleed at church on his one good shirt and Ma Rogers had all but dunked him into the lemonade.

 

“Found the salt!” Dum Dum said, as Jones dumped some of his canteen over the jacket and Bucky picked their dinner off the ground by their feet. Supposedly a fella could eat those, but the only thing Bucky knew you could do was make stock. He doubted they’d find anything onions or carrots to boil, but hey. He would have doubted they’d find chickens. Falsworth talked about cow bone marrow all the time.

 

“Haven’t you gotten...blood on you, uh...” Steve started and stopped when every Howler looked over at him.

 

Never let anybody tell you when Steve Rogers didn’t know when to pack it in and shut up, because he pointed towards the barn. “I’ll uh. See if the pump is working.”

 

* * *

 

[ **November 1943]**

“So, you got used to the promotion checks, huh?” Bucky’d said, once Steve’d fallen back into step, “buy anything good?”

 

Steve snorted.

 

“I’m just saying, seems like a lotta work unless you got yourself something nice. Warm socks? A few good meals?”

 

Bucky grabbed him by the meat of his arm, gave it a squeeze and it didn’t even feel like meat. Dum Dum’d used to strongman flex but it hadn’t ever felt this… sturdy. Bucky squeezed it again out of sheer pup-like confusion and Steve got a good flush going up his neck.

 

Coupla fellas put their nose in the air when the wind swept the scent back, and Bucky’s gums felt like they were giving his teeth more room, lips curling up. And he just swallowed _that_ sorta nonsense back down.

 

Just because his life was soma kinda practical joke didn’t mean a fella could drop his manners.

 

“Pal, if you didn’t want to draw another canned hosiery ad, I gotta say this was sorta an over-reaction.” Bucky dropped his hand and it tingled with warmth. Steve rolled his neck, shrugged his shoulders back.

 

They’d scrapped the first draft of Steve and carved them a new angel out of the marble. Kept some bits, sure. They’d stolen what they liked-- the big blue eyes, bright hair, and long lashes-- and left the rest for the funny pages. No, well. That wasn’t fair. They probably hadn’t liked Steve’s particular brand of stubborn, but buy the house and the ghost came with.

 

Steve tugged on a hank of Bucky’s hair. “They let you keep all this?”

 

His scalp felt heavy with grease and sweat. Steve must’ve felt it. Bucky hadn’t tried to peacock too much around Steve, sure. Steve’d be sweet on him out of the clear blue sky, not for any real reason. So Bucky’d been in the habit of keeping himself neat. And, hell, it was bad enough when it’d looked like Bucky couldn’t keep Steve fed. So he’d done what anybody did when things got the right kinda bad: shined up his shoes, and smiled when people asked how he was doing.

 

“You can work lone, they’ll let you get out of regs.”  

 

Dames in bombed out areas of England would sweep on lipstick and dress up in their best dresses. Companies put nice prints on their flour bags so folks making dresses out of ‘em could at least have nice ones. Steve drew the stars when he got too sick to sit up.

But he hadn’t done much during whole “being a POW, half dying, and then being a lab experiment” thing. Somebody’d shaved him for some kinda reason, given him a sponge bath. But it was a _guests over with the house in shambles_ sort of feeling.

 

He heard some of the fellas picking up step, scenting up Steve’s trail. Bucky turned back and his face must’ve been a _story_ because they’d slowed right on down again. Steve smelled the kind of good that got a fella’s hand smacked with a wooden spoon.

 

Steve listed closer to Bucky. There was a saying back home. _Got that fella like a fishhook._ Potentials dogging the steps of some omega they were putting the works on for. Had them bobbing along their line.

 

“Buck,” Steve’d hung in the middle of one long pause. “I signed myself on to this gig about 20 minutes after you got yourself on that train. Had enough time to get money forwarding set up, and drop off everything at your folks house.”

 

Bucky waited for the joke to temper the harsh scent of sincerity. But Steve just swallowed and watched the road. Bucky lost the beat of his own march for a second, the record of his own head skipping. Steve shone bright in the sun, and his scent was what woulda caused Odysseus to take his earplugs out and drown. A siren on the rock, scent sweet and the song a beacon. Except, no. Except Steve hadn’t ever wanted nobody to drown. He’d just wanted his rock and to be left alone.

 

Bucky swatted at him, “What kinda foolheaded-”

 

“There was a recruitment center next to the train station. Almost got Special Exceptioned again. Looked like they were about three seconds from calling the GRI, all said. Except this uh. Dr. Erskine took a shine to me.”

 

“Any other folks in his program an omega, huh?” Bucky wanted to curl up and bury his face in Steve’s neck. He wanted a hand in his hair and for the two of ‘em to get buried real soft and quiet in some soft loam somewhere. By a river, maybe.

 

Only the muscle of long practice kept his gaze forward, his feet moving on beat. Hunger made the heart grow fonder and all that, sure, but Bucky’d been on that narrow edge of death and Steve’d saluted to Cerberus and dragged Bucky back up out of the dark,

 

Bucky huffed, so Steve tucked him up under his arm. “He was a good sort.”

 

Bucky caught the tense shift for the softball it was, and pressed his nose up to Steve’s neck. He got half a noseful that plucked something out of tune in the back of his head before Steve flinched away and right. Right.

 

They stepped aside from one another, all at once.

 

“How many pencils you break getting used to this?”

 

Steve groaned, “better to ask how many shoelaces I snapped.”

  
“You used to it now?”

 

“View is nicer.”

 

They’d marched far enough ahead of the tanks. For being behind enemy lines they were pretty low on _enemies_. Everyone in the dugout and nobody outfield.

 

(You know, they had breeding pairs playing baseball these days? One of the 107th'd gotten careful play-by-plays of the league sent to him by the mail. Elise Graves.

 

They'd stood up and read the letters with the dramatic flair of a radio broadcaster, flat radio accent and a good sense of timing. All about the Raspberries and the perfect hair and the home runs, punctuated by what Elise had called “a grave sense of humor,” with a perfectly flat expression.

 

Bucky hadn't seen Elise in the 400 faces they were trooping back.)

 

“Anyways. They got me in the program with military beta’s. Real career fellas, all muscle-”

 

“And shit for brains.” Great, though, if you needed bodies at buck private prices. “How’d you handle it?”

 

Steve’d shrugged, “s’alright.” Which was a whole mess of a story if Bucky ever'd heard one.

 

Bucky’d stared him into sort of a sheepish little slouch.

 

“Afterwards they had me doing the bond sales circuit for a while,” Steve said to the ground, “10% increase in every city I visited.”

 

“Never pegged you for sales.” Bucky turned his focus to the trees. “You just yell at folks until they gave you their wallets?”

 

“If lifting a motorcycle gets revenue up in Saks 5th Avenue, then it’ll be ham for Christmas.” Steve said.

 

He turned at the percussion of heels on hardwood. He saw the sharp glass of the Tiffany’s flagship counter on 5th casting reflections on the trees. Steve kept talking, kept walking and Sergeant Barnes followed. The interior of the case was crisp white, curved with busts that were dressed in black velvet. The man behind the counter looked past Bucky, a diamond on his tie pin

 

They came up on it and Bucky blinked and looked behind him, at the pampered auxiliary hanging off the arms of her mated pair, a fur stole wrapped around her neck and real silk stockings down her legs. Her heels click on the dirt, her red smile sweet. Big brown adoring eyes seeing past Bucky to the sapphires glittering sharp in the woods.

 

He dragged his eyes back to the trees, and the air gone colorless. When he glanced back there was nothing but dirt.

 

“I’m going to check on the back” Bucky said, and Steve turned to watch him loop around. The fellas on Steve’s line picked up step. He’d go find the folks who couldn’t keep up, start shooting the breeze, and pick up the pace once they’d gotten into the beat of talking.

 

Bucky’d always figured it was why Jesus told so many stories, to keep the apostles walking in step.

 

* * *

 

[ **Who Knows Where]**

 

> “ **DON’T BE A SHOW OFF.** The British dislike bragging and showing off. A exemplary British auxiliary is one who provides but asks for no thanks. American auxiliary’ stipend is the highest in the world. When pay day comes it would be sound practice to keep mum about the money sent home according to British standards. They consider you highly paid. They won’t think any better of you for your showing off.
> 
> ‘ **THE BRITISH ARE TOUGH**. Don’t be misled by the British tendency to be soft spoken and polite. If they need to be, they can be plenty tough. The English language didn’t spread across the oceans of the world because the people were light trending.
> 
> NEVER criticize the Royal Pair.
> 
> Don’t criticize the food, clothes beer or cigarettes to the British. Remember they have been at war since 1939.”
> 
> -Instructions for American Service Government Issue in Britain

* * *

 

**[January 1944]**

 

The farmhouse was a burnt out shell of a thing, crowded with mold. Barn didn't have a roof, blown clean off.

 

According to Dernier that happened with straw, sometimes. It’d get wet, dry out, and then… explode. So there went the barn and everything too big to get out.

 

Jones was too busy scrubbing his coat off and wasn’t translating, so they all limped along the best they could.

 

Bucky was gonna hammer French through his skull one way or another. To talk to Dernier, mostly, yeah. But then he could get a job at a fancy restaurant after the war. One of those with the crisp tablecloths, and suggest wines. Flirt like servers did uptown and rake in tips. Maybe he’d lose an eye and have to wear an eyepatch and people would cluck as say “well, The _War_ , you know.” He let the idea of it melt away. It had the flavor of one of his old daydreams, but none of the chew.

 

Better idea. Steve and the Howlers could all throw in for a brownstone uptown. Learn how to cook proper meals.

 

He’d always have a dance partner, even if none of ‘em would look at good in a dress. They could get some dogs, some herbs in the window and talk in their own language of English, French, inside jokes and call signs. Make a whole new country under one roof.

 

That daydream had more grit and he tucked it into his cheek for later.

 

Silo was still fine, sturdy and mostly underground. Troops before them had scraped it clean of anything a body could expect to eat, so it was 5-in-1, forage and chicken. They found some onions that’d sprouted in the basement, and some kinda root something out in the woods, so they could make themselves some something.  Steve had himself a version of the M-ration the Quartermaster called the Bear-ration.

 

Back in November, the Nazis’d taken Zhotmir. Howlers took out the main French HYDRA base because fair was fair. Dernier had made it shine bright as lipstick and twice as pretty.

 

They'd been shoving K-rations down Steve’s throat during missions. Packing in carbohydrates and sugar like he was a marathon runner. Except then Stark’d gone on this weird tangent about sled dogs after getting enough data about Steve’s vitals, and so anyways. Stark’d told the Quartermaster and the Quartermaster had named it the Bear-ration and Steve would shove Spam down his mouth like pie.

 

Newspapers said the world needed a hero. Bucky’d said the hero needed lunch.

 

("Well," Bucky'd dug up one of his smoother edged smiles. "Pardon me for fussing about him. It's just that if an army marches on it's stomach, and goddamn-pardon me. Gosh, does it ever. Then Cap-- your best marcher’s-- got a lot he needs to march on.”

 

And Bucky, you know Bucky. Proper, good auxillary James Buchanan Barnes. He'd been feeding his skilled position since they were wearing kiddie shorts, wouldya believe it? He'd taken off his cap, and shit _that_ was how he’d gotten on the cookbooks. _Hellfrost_.)

 

What Steve ate in a day could've fed the rest of them three squares, easy. They had to sit on him to eat it, too, powdered lemon, entire tub of peanut butter, chocolate bar and all, even as Steve got all shamefaced and square jawed about it. But they were a strike team. In, out, refuel.

 

The well was full, the water clean. Steve drank deeply, water sloshing down his front and gasping before going in for the next.  

 

Steve fetched buckets and filled the metal washtub Dugan’d pulled out of the rubble. The place had been near clean of scent marks when they’d all sniffed it out. And HYDRA weren’t much for the camp-outs, all said. At least nobody’d seen one.

 

Falsworth was setting up camp, since he had the most experience. He knew how to set up a camp with no tents, wet wood, and them downwind. (“A lean-to is helpful, but worthless unless one insulates against the cold earth beneath.”)

 

Morita was figuring out the chickens. He’d gotten the feathers off and was shearing down their backs to get the spines and butterfly ‘em. He knew that sorta thing, since he’d worked in a kitchen for a few rotations.

 

(“I was the weedy kid who processed acorns, got Chef another glass of wine, and did clean up, ” he’d sighed.

 

Morita talked about acorn soup like Steve talked about heavy, thick, rich rye bread. Or Dernier with crusty baguettes, baked fresh every morning crisp as a new dollar.

 

Or, well, Falsworth's everything on toast. The Brits hadn’t met a thing they didn't wanna boil put on toast, far as Bucky could tell.)

 

Dernier set up some alarms around the perimeter. He had a head for all that electrical stuff. When they got themselves a brownstone he could wire it all up so Steve always had himself good light. He could find some chemicals in a HYDRA lab by smell and get them a bomb with a shrug and a flourish. Sometimes Bucky felt bad about them taking him from the French Resistance, since the fella could’ve brought the _pain_ to the Nazi’s in Paris, but Dernier was the sort of fella who’d take out the _arc de triomphe_ without a second thought, and after the war that’d get a little awkward.

 

Jones got himself on scent scouting, his nose'd find trouble in any kind of haystack. HYRDA didn’t leave a scent, for the most part, but a fella who looked over his shoulder for only one sort of enemy was a fella who got stabbed in the back. Jones was the connoisseur of danger, had a pallet for it.

 

Bucky looked down his scope at the spots he’d pick. They didn’t have the high ground. They’d denned down, but they could be surrounded, somebody could easier pen them in. Just needed a clean eyed fella tucked up nice and sweet right about….there.

 

Except if he took shots, then Bucky might be able to counter… and Steve had the shield, which was a great hat trick for the sniper duel and he was just playing checkers against himself at this point.

 

“Barnes, get your ass down here and take a damn bath,” Dum Dum called up, “and wash your damn gear while you’re at it. You smell anymore like a squirrel and a hawk's gonna get you."

 

Bucky took a breath. FInger along the trigger guard. Exhaled. Let his brain circle down and drain back into his skull.

 

“Ah, what’s that old saying, Morty? Better to smell like the grave than be in it,” Bucky shot back when he was mostly back inside himself. Sergeant Barnes’ eyes kept tracking along the bluff, but all the movement followed the wind.  
  
“Can’t say I’ve heard it before Barnes, but it does have a certain ring to it.” Falsworth called over from the fire.

 

“Barnes, I’m gonna be real sore if you think we can’t do our jobs because we scrubbed up a little,” Morita added, “and I will absolutely eat your share of chicken.”

 

“Hey Cap, does Barnes always get grouchy when he isn’t the pretty one?” Dum Dum said, walking up under Bucky’s roost. “It’s alright, I’m sure they’re plenty of lil’ potentials dreaming of making you theirs when you get back.”

 

Something like a growl hit his ear. Bucky tracked the noise, but all he saw was Steve, cleaning gear. His body language read as normal, curled all over his project. Bucky looked along the tree line again. Dum Dum didn’t react, except to stay down there looking rosey-cheeked, chewing on his damn cigar.

 

Who knew where he was getting those things. He didn’t light them that often. He’d take it out and roll it between his fingers sometimes. Popped it back between his teeth, sometimes. Put it away others.

 

Everybody had their thing.

 

Jones liked to chew on the side of his thumb when he was thinking about something. Bucky'd grab him by the hand and check his nails to see how he was doing. Jones would huff, scent work nice and mellow. Bucky’d stare him down and shove him at Steve for leave-on-march. Steve knew shit about comforting, but he was learning on the job.

 

Then you had good ol’ Falsworth. Proper regulation career. Dropped boots  in the parachute brigade for the BAF. Came from some proper swells somewhere the got sold to the Queen, or uh. No. Sold was what poor folks did. Tribute, or uh. Tithed. That was it, a posh pair would tithe one of theirs to the military and one to the church and keep a couple spares just in case. He kept his nails neat, his mustache trimmed and didn’t love one weapon over any other. Liked his food hearty and salted. He also kept his beret, propped perfect on the top of his head. He was a subtle fella about it, but Bucky wasn’t a slouch about that sorta thing and would adjust as needed. Military tried to train something out of you and all you did was get real quiet about it.

 

Dernier had a lighter he liked. Nice and heavy, a little tarnished around the edges. He'd click it a touch open and closed, near silent except for a quiet, quiet tap-tap-tap, open, closed. He used chemical or electrical bombs more often than fire. But he liked his lighter, used it for his weird little roll-ups.

 

Morita, of course, fiddled with his dog tags. That was standard, the brass all but encouraged it. Dog tags reminded a fella who he belonged to, and cost ‘em nothing for you to scrape the two of ‘em back and forth across one another. But sometimes he’d reach for his pocket for something he didn’t have. Only if he got real tired or real comfortable. Some things died slow.

 

Going by the way Steve kept sitting right center of them all? He liked having a full pack well enough. He wouldn’t say a word about being happy. Life tried to train something out of you, and all you did was get real quiet about it. Full belly, full house, full life as Buck’s ma used to say. Steve'd left a space to his right and was working the paint job on his damn shield. The metal didn’t scratch, dent or scuff, but he kept touching up his paint.

 

(“Why’s it gotta be a bullseye, huh?” Bucky’d asked. “Any other kinda shape in the world, but you gotta put a big white star on it?”

 

“The bullseyes on the _shield_ , wise guy.” Steve was always fussing at the white star, on account of how it’d gotten scuffed up from the bullets. “Like crests used to be on the shield in a joust. Give ‘em something to aim at.”

 

“You ever figure someone might go for the legs?”

 

“Sure, if it _weren’t a bullseye_. But you riflemen are always about hitting the middle of a target. Can’t help yourselves,” And, sure enough, every time he’d ever startled Bucky, his rifle’d been aimed square at the target.

 

“So that’s why you’ve got the big white star on your chest?”

 

Steve’d dropped his head, like anytime somebody mentioned the outfit. But they kept it clean and marched on. Center mass was better than a headshot. Stark’d done something to Steve’s outfit, weren’t Superman bulletproof, but it sure tried.)

 

“Barnes? You gonna keep watch from up there or you thinking of sleeping sometime?” Jones asked. Dum Dum’d marched off, so must’ve been a stretch.

 

Weren’t so odd, Bucky grabbing the high ground real fast to keep an eye out. If he got himself the lay of the land then he slept better. Didn’t work so good with maps. Maps were the thought of the thing. Maps were the Little Matchstick girl staring into the window at a fire and freezing to death.

 

The brass’d move these little flags here and there and Bucky’d think boots. Couldn’t not, really. They moved the flag and his brain shoved the idea of the space between them. The stretch of the expanse, hills and trees and swamps and the blue, blue, the blue the-

 

Steve would move markers. But he’d always hold 'em a second in his hand for a second. Didn’t use the little snooker sticks. See, Captain America and Steven Grant Rogers weren’t split at all, like they should’ve been.

 

Bucky could see Steve in the no man's land of it all.)

 

Steve’d pull out their map and compass when they were on the move and Bucky’d stay real quiet. He used to measure distance in city blocks, and now he could feel it in his bones. Steve’d ask them all of their input, and Bucky clench his teeth and feel the roadblock in their way, or the downed bridge and after awhile they stopped calling him a pessimist and just nodded along.

 

(“How fast can they get there?” Colonel Phillips’d said, ring tapping on the side of his glass. Steve bit at the side of his thumb and looked at the runt piece of map. Saw _lines_. “No roads, no rail, no air support.”

 

Steve’d looked straight at Bucky and it’d been harder. He couldn’t...it weren't his feet doing the march, so he couldn’t feel it in his soles.

 

“Ruck march?” Bucky’d said, while everyone else calculated distance. “Give it four days.”

 

“It’s only 50 miles. They can cover that in two if-” Sergent Felt’d said.

 

Bucky’d gotten up. “So right off we have winter, shorter days so can’t do 12 hours. Rough terrain here, here, here, because the Nazis got the roads guarded, or impassable. Slows it down to 15 miles full ruck march. Sure, force the 25 miles if you want ‘em seeing triple and shooting nobody. Got to go around this swamp area or you’ve lost ‘em. Another 15 miles right there. Four days, best luck.” Bucky’d said, the lot of it muddled, all memory and no...no clean line. But experience was better than speculation, at least.

 

“Sergeant Barnes is right.” Agent Carter’d said, sharp as her heels on the cement bunker floor. Sometimes they walked on dirt, but she never sunk in and Bucky sorta hated that a little.

 

“As I mentioned earlier, here are the topography reports of the area. Now if we utilized the team to the West, they have a longer distance, but clearer terrain. They could make it in three. Yes, even two if we’ve a spot of luck,” Agent’s Carter's red nail tapped against the map.

 

Bucky looked down at his own hands, nails broken up with white spots and tips ragged from chewing. He’d folded them in and looked at nothing for a second.

 

Bucky’d sat back down and felt Steve’s eyes on him. Heavier than they used to be.)

 

So Bucky took the lay of the land, while the fellas talked. He got himself down when it was this crisp little model in his head. Like one of them, what was it called? Them little gardens you could grew in a bottle? He had the whole thing growing in his head, with water beading down the sides. Terrariums.

 

Their brownstone would have a garden, he figured. A garden and window boxes packed with herbs, hanging pots of flowers, so it’d always smell good.

* * *

 

[ **November 1943]**

“You can’t only sleep with me,” Bucky said when Steve finished circling and getting everyone bedded down. They’d gone for the warren method, a lot of small little hutches of folks. Body heat was the cheapest on offer, and fires were asking for trouble.

 

Bucky’d circled a few times, gotten the lay of the land. Restless and pacing, making folks move to better cover. Most of them had that soft, indulgent look in their eyes, but he had to chase them out of one bush into another. Because...because it just. He had to. A dog circling and circling until he could lie down.

 

(“They don’t wanna hear it, pal,” Bucky’d said when Steve’d almost gotten the words in his mouth to tell the lot of ‘em he weren’t any kind of hero, and Bucky’d heard them before Steve could say anything.

 

“I’m not. I don’t-” Steve started and Bucky’d taken him by the neck and it was like pushing two positive magnet poles together, until something in Steve flipped over and clicked.

 

“You pulled the sword out of the stone. You can be whoever you wanna be around me, but around them you gotta wear the crown.” Bucky said, tucking them out of sight. “They don’t wanna hear it.”

 

Steve opened his mouth and Bucky’d dug his nails in. “This ain’t about _you._ ”

 

Steve shut his mouth again and Bucky’s grip barely made a red spot on Steve’s neck, but he listened. He did his rounds. He shut his damn mouth and _smiled_.)

 

How did folks survive so much nature? There were sixteen different kinds of smells and most of them could mean anything. A fella got plucked down in Europe with a handbook and a gun and no idea what a single new scent or sound meant. Could be a soldier, sure. Could be a bear, since Bucky never had a chance to sniff out bear piss before. He shoulda gone to the zoo more.

 

Hell, the Polish army had an actual bear as part of a battalion. Congratulations buddy: you get to spin a yarn for a whole court of angels. We’ll try and get  _all_ your body buried in one place.

 

Bucky’d finally found a suitable hiding spot in the roots of a tall, thick tree. They shuffled Steve's coat and some leaves together, under a natural lean-to.

 

Bucky got halfway into a good daydream about Barbarian Steve, his cave and a pile of furs.

 

**The Anatomy of a Daydream**

  * > **Skeleton:** Find some small thing to focus on. You had to start everything with a good strong anchor stitch or it’d unravel. Maybe a real memory to build off of. The feeling of rain before Steve’s heat came proper. When he was still happy with skin contact, and the rest of the world got washed away.

  * > **Muscle:** Fill in from that detail. Add stitches and close the gap. The smell, first. Moss, trees, the rich scent of rain. Wasn’t real without the smells. Then you got the scene in your head, the grey of the rain, the quality of the light. The temperature against your skin. Nothing that moved, just set dressing. The curve of rocks and dirt inside the cave. The texture of the floor under your feet. The plush of fur against your hand.

  * > **Circulatory System:** A daydream was just fluff unless it was about building something. Bucky’d mostly’d daydreamed about Steve being happy and Bucky being useful. With pups and a mate and a house all for them. It was like sewing without a needle, you needed something pumping life into the meat of it.

  * > **Nervous System:** Had to find the thing you wanted to drown yourself in. The real thread of the thing: the texture of furs, warmth of a fire, scent of cooking meat. The beat of a good conversation. Something real enough it could make you mouth along to it in the real world. Something to make your muscles twitch in reaction. Steve coming back with a kill, maybe. Pushing inside the cave and scenting Bucky first thing, all sweet, smug and pleased with himself.

  * > **Skin:** People who didn’t know how to sink deep got all caught up in this part. All about the surface of it. Every good daydream was the same except for the skin. Bucky sometimes went from the top down, a needle going from the skin down right into the marrow. Steve shoving the piles of pelts to peak coziness and stoking the fire, smug with the blood under his fingernails. Watching Bucky dress and clean the kill, and nobody out there in the whole of anything.




 

Bucky dragged himself out the daydream by the scruff of his neck. He’d save that one for leaner times. Wouldn’t do wasting it when Steve was right here, smelling like a charity bakery to a starving fella.

 

“Don’t see why not,” Steve said, and what was it like to be Steve? Bucky’s brain felt like a river, like nothing ever stuck around. And Steve couldn’t be a rock because then it meant Bucky was wearing him down, layer by layer. But still, he felt like a barrel daredevil inside his own head.

 

The wind didn’t bite so much down here in the tangle of the tree roots. He hadn’t felt too cold on the walk, donated his jacket to someone else’s shiver.

 

“Shows favoritism. You’ve gotta whole mess of fellas out here who need minding, ” Bucky said, because he was used to having a daydream in one hand and a conversation in the other.

 

Steve flopped down like a big old hound and if this were a bed then Bucky’d be in the middle. And that plucked a coupla off-key strings in his head,

 

“At least it made you warm,” Bucky said.

 

“And you’re goddamn freezing. What in the Sam Hill have they been feeding you? You’ve got all that muscle, pull your weight.”

 

Bucky didn’t feel cold. Steve grabbed his hands and covered what he could, blew on his fingertips. Bucky half expected Steve to tuck Bucky’s fingers into his mouth. Warm the frozen parts and then tuck them against his stomach and...well, of course he didn’t. Wet would just make everything colder. They still had their boots and socks on, so he didn’t try and tuck Bucky’s feet between his thighs. Like they’d fallen through a goddamn mirror and the world coated silver.

 

“Can’t believe I get rescued from the brink of death and you couldn’t even spring for a nice bed,” Bucky scrapped from the bottom of his verbal coin jar.

 

“ _Shows favoritism_ he says. _Where’s my nice bed_ , he says. Next it’ll be all: ‘Ahh geeze Stevie, what kinda sore luck does a fella gotta have to put up with your snoring’?”  
  
“You saying I talk like that? That's what you saying?” Bucky shoved his hand around Steve’s neck, so Steve wrestled him down. The weight felt good, made his muscles stop twitching under his skin like they wanted to leave.

 

Bucky didn’t much feel like fighting him about it. He let his body go where Steve wanted. Steve rested half on top of him and rumbled low, breathing so deep and easy it melted a fella’s heart.

 

He could picture it from a bird’s eye, the trucks hidden under trees and the fellas hidden under trucks. From up and up it looked like nothing much, and from the sides they had ears out. Not protected, but spitting fierce and wary as Cerberus.

 

Steve'd inhaled so deep it nudged him down in the dirt. Bucky'd knocked their foreheads together and. Breathed.

 

(He'd imagined getting off the train, or the boat, in Brooklyn and breathing so deep his ribs creaked.

 

He'd imagined walking the corner deli and getting a corned beef sandwich a thick as his entire mouth.. He'd imagined eating until his stomach rounded out: sour pickles, thick cut fries, huge cups of coffee and thick slice of whatever pie was on special. Eating until he needed to let his belt out for once. He’d imagined surprising Steve at work or home with an advertisement-ready smile.

 

Short a limb, probably, or an eye. They wouldn’t let him go unless he wouldn’t wind up, aim, fire. He’d usually lean towards losing an eye because he’d always been half-worried Stark’d find some way to him to work around one arm.

 

But a lost eye would have come with a nice severance and insurance bonus, so he could have stumbled his way to Steve, tracking him like a headline. Steve would’ve penny pinched his way through Bucky’d checks, of course. They’d buy themselves a house somewhere far away from people.

 

(In his daydreams, Steve would be fine going out to the country. Getting some fresh air and sun. Never seeing a building that needed a fire escape.)

 

Steve would get a steady job doing something or other. Mailing his drawings in, probably, or working for a local little paper. He’d likely have to get a second auxiliary, but that’d be fine.

 

Bucky would never have to leave or do anything but keep the house clean, soft and fresh. Not a speck of dirt, he used to think, drenched in mug and tucked in a briar patch. Not a one. That was his prayer to God and the hosts of Heaven. Let him get back to Steve and he'd keep the angel's own house. He’d let his body go fallow and be this soft little Head of House and nobody’d think he’d hurt so much as a spider.

 

God was a cruel and funny sort.)

 

Steve was here and Bucky breathed so deep his spine cracked. Breathed so deep his ribs felt tight and his lungs burned at the bottom. He didn’t have enough body to take it in.

 

Steve must’ve felt the same because he pressed his nose right to Bucky’s jaw. Under, where proper scent glands would be if a fella could grow 'em. Sniffed, in short little bursts and rumbled low and melodious. Weren’t time for heat, and if this was a last ditch bitch they’d have to knock Steve out and carry him. But Steve just rode that fever-sweet edge and Bucky...

 

Bucky was about due for a breakdown. There was some kinda base instinct that said he weren’t gonna have it around Steve. Not when Steve’s walking around like he was a fella stuffed in some borrowed body. Bucky got a hand in Steve's hair and started smothering him in safe-scent. Like Steve was green little 19-year-old George Harris, useful as two left shoes.

 

Steve huffed hot. Breathing came easy without a sputter or click. Bucky’d spent most of last night listening to the slow, wet rush of his lungs. Steady beat of his heart. Something around 25 beats per minute, according to his count.  Which… that had to be in some folder somewhere, tucked in with Steve’s height, weight and what? Width between his eyes? Saliva production?

 

Steve's hair felt different. Strong and thick in way that used to only exist in hair tonic advertisements.

 

“I don’t know what I’m doing.” Steve said at something below a whisper. Quiet enough that Bucky could pretend not to hear it. Steve’s signature kinda-kindness.

 

Bucky didn’t need kid gloves here. Not a cent more than he did when he was a P.O.W.

 

He’d throw down with any kind of enemy officer: here, there or in Hell itself. The Devil was gonna need to pull Bucky off plenty of folk, because who needed to roll a boulder when he had every sinner to pummel? He’d been half full of pneumonia, stared Death in the face, and figured he’d take his mouthful of flesh if it was on offer.

 

And yet: here he was.

 

“You think the brass do? You ain’t been in the regs long enough.”

 

Steve'd let Bucky pet him. Kept holding Bucky down against the sticks, stones and dirt. Then he snorted.

 

“What?”

 

“They were gonna send your letter to our old address. I was right there and they were gonna waste postage.”

 

Bucky imagined his KIA letter. Imagined it returned to sender a little clearer. He laughed loud enough that he saw the glimmer of a few eyes in the dark. But they caught a whiff of safe scent and denned back down.

 

“They wasted the ink on a letter?”

 

“All: _Dear Mr. Rogers, we regret to inform you that Sergeant James B. Barnes is reportedly Missing In Action-_

 

“Oh they would report me MIA so they didn’t have to shell out for dowry destruction.” Bucky pulled on Steve’s hair. “You’d have to write a petition to have me declared dead. That would’ve been a fuss.”

 

“A lot of paperwork,” Steve agreed, “Easier to mount a rescue.”  
  
Bucky hummed low, and it was easier to gentle Steve than it was to think too much about… anything. Steve wouldn’t ask him about it, he wasn’t the kind. And the army wouldn’t ask so long as he said he didn’t remember nothing and kept one foot going in front of the other. Any auxiliary worth their salt knew how to push through until the body ran outta push. He could let the lab alone. He could...he could just be another body. Just special enough to keep, but not so special they’d pin him to a card and label him.

 

Steve fell asleep against him. Bucky's dumb fog-of-war brain got a hit of Steve’s sleep smell and rolled right on its back. Steve smelled hunger-is-the-best spice good. Not like how a fella might think of good. Books always went on about flowers or baked bread or sweets when they were being poetic. You’d think English woulda worked out a few more words for how things smelled by now. Expanded, it what was it? Lexical field?

 

You had colors, tastes, textures and sounds. But smell? Dictionary picked up it’s ball and went home. It was a conversation he’d heard on the radio once. He’d been gardening for the mayor and they’d had all the windows open, talk radio filtering down from the second story while Bucky trimmed the hedges. How smell only owned about three English words: stinky, fragrant and musky. And for there everything smelled like something. Like flowers, or baked bread or blood. Hell, you might even be able to throw flavors in there: sour, sweet, or strong

 

(“You’ll be a sheep before you’re grown, with that wool-gathering,” Head of Household use to say, punctuated by a wooden spoon.)

 

Steve smelled good in the way where the lungs keep demanding more even if they didn’t know why. Bitter chocolate sorta good. Clean sweat kinda good. Weren’t no smell like Steve’s. English didn’t have the words for it, which meant there was this… catalog in Bucky’s head.

 

Steve didn't snore anymore. He used to roll Steve on his side to get a decent night sleep. Now his nose don’t whistle and his lungs don’t have that wet snap to ‘em. It was like coming out of the city all over again. Everything gone quiet.

 

* * *

 

[ **Who Knows Where]**

Dreams weren’t something Bucky’s ever much thought of much. He’d drifted through them, woke up and holding onto ‘em had been like trying to fish the shell out of an egg white. Steve would once-in-a while talk about a dream he'd had. Usually if it were funny (“yeah we was both rabbits and I had'ta give you this...I dunno. Diamonds? Or cheese?  And we were in this underwater mansion that had the inside of a cathedral and then-”)

 

And don’t go thinking he was this practical sort of fella. He liked _The Hobbit_ well enough, sure. He weren’t the sort to go worrying about his handkerchief going on an adventure. He and Steve would have picked up sticks in half a second under the same circumstances. Which, who knew. Gandalf didn't fuss over the world of Man too much on account of that wanderlust. The stories sure didn’t go into gender politics none. Hobbits loved food. Dwarves loved mountains (and food and treasure). Dragons loved treasure (and mountains). No muss no fuss.  Bucky'd liked the story since Hobbits seemed like a whole race of Head of Households. Which were nice fantasy, all said.

 

Nah, but Bucky was a curator of daydreams. On labor rotation that’s how you survived, body of man, head like a hobbit all in cozy holes and nice dens. Put your shoulder into it and letting your head run as far as it’d get.

 

He'd used to keep a pulp in his lunchbox, shoved in it his head  while he devoured a sandwich and a cup of coffee. A good story could keep a fella… anesthetized minding inventory. Being labor rotation weren’t a bad gig. He was all for Buy Union but that was for companies. The world needed more work than industry could pay for. Needed good roads, needed good food, needed clean water.

 

And hey. Fella got lunch breaks, steady paycheck. Hell: so long as you went to a government subsidized hospital they’d help foot your bill. It was one of the New Deal moves. Roosevelt'd figured that if companies couldn’t find folks work, the government would. They'd dig a canal in Panama if they had to. And fellas who got paid spent money. Spent money got the country greased enough to lurch forward bit and half.

 

After Roosevelt said go, any fella could sign himself up. Preference given to folks where the pack had breeding pairs. At the end of the day the better work you could squeeze out, the more work you got.  Bonus if the fella was willing to travel. But an alright stipend even if a guy stayed in Borough and took what was on offer.

 

Except the under-clause was that should good ol’ Uncle Sam decided he needed to put his gun sites on some Hun, well. He already had your number.

 

That first night of sleep after Steve came back was bright as Technicolor. Vivid as all the patriotic shades of lipstick marching across the ads.

 

And dreams got mean out in the mud. Wouldn’t shake. Bucky’d minded plenty of folk who’d stunk of camp with fear. Pack would all curl around who needed it. Babies’ cries and fear stink got every kind of attention.

 

Bucky'd wake up out of a sharp dream and wait for the camp to come nosing in, sure. Except he’d smell nothing but sleep-sweat sodden with _nature_.

 

He couldn’t much afford now to let his head go off without him. So his dreams got claws, instead.

 

* * *

 

The lab is cold but it weren't him on the table. It's cold in the lab, but ain't’ his skin that’s on sale. He doesn’t recognize it except the smell. He can’t find his bones. There are people moving through him. Around him? There’s people on the table and he doesn’t know what’s happening to him.  He knows the fear scent.

 

He doesn’t see anything except the light. The rooms all dark and everything’s gotten all fuzzy. Some trying to erase a chalk drawing and it ain’t _gone_ but it isn’t anything real.

 

The light is sharp, though. Jagged and heavy it uppercuts and he stumbles back, feels it sharp over his eyes. But it passes him by and it’s on the… table. And the body. No, the ribs move. Somebody’s still in that thing.

 

Ain’t somebody he’s seen or smelled before, and God they’re. He’s. It’s a he, since he’s naked. Ain’t got nothing but skin over his bones, stretched thin.

 

The lights so bright and the smell is so strong. There’s a man on the table and his arms are hardly bigger than a both Bucky thumb'd put together. Bucky tries to move and can’t get a grip on the floor, if there is one. Floors should be. Floors or ground or...space? His   Is this a lab? It’s cold, but only stocks with the table, and the light, and the almost-body. The prisoner? No. The subject.

 

Bucky’d seen plenty of hairpin folks gone gaunt with hunger, but not like this. Skin gone yellow, and eyes gone blank, thickest part of the arm the sharp, hard joints. When he opens his mouth he ain’t got teeth left. When Bucky tries to look his arms they're a maze of bug bites and needle tracks.

 

Everyone else is a fog person. They move through the chalk nothing and pass through the light without even blocking it. Nothing to them, nothing to look at, nothing to grab onto.

 

Fella on the table ain’t got nothing left but wet sounds.  and Bucky tries to get to him. Feels the cold of the room and the burn of the lights but he can’t get feet under him. Could take a scalpel and get a grip on somebody, get the blood out, get somebody’s blood out. Free the prisoner one way or another. But the whole room was lights and the skin and the bones, and the fog men.

 

The man breath rattled in the room. He had yellow around the eyes and mouth, hair shaved away and scalp still covered in bug bites. He’s got to. He has to do something. Grab something. Has to.

 

There’s a crash, something breaking and then it’s gone. Flung away like recoil. He wakes up the dream sits heavy on his chest.

 

* * *

 

**[January 1944]**

 

“You leave any hot water for me?” Bucky asked, even as he could see steam curling up from the tub. The water was sudsy but mostly clean, which suggested Steve’d refilled the tub at least once.

 

They had some torn up flannel sheets as wash rags and Bucky was gonna soak, then scrub a layer of skin off.

 

Steve stared at him. Bucky sighed and looked along the sight lines. The rest of the Howlers were securing the camp. Steve nodded at the tub. Bucky stripped down and tossed his kit into the water, because Dum Dum hadn’t been _wrong_ exactly.

 

He stepped into the water and after a moment of standing in the freezing air, sat down to scrub up.

 

Steve looked back down at his shield. Bucky started getting the dirt embedded under his nails and the week old sweat. Felt like one of those Arden spas: the chance to let his skin steam up a bit and the dead skin to slough off. Some folks said hot water or steam made the skin looser and needed astringent to firm up again, but a fella did what he could.

 

Steve looked up once in awhile fingers twitching. Bucky started scrubbing his clothes best he could with the soap and his own hands. Dirt and what-all-else rinsing out. He needed a long soak and a washboard. Baking soda to freshen up the whites.

 

He almost got up and Steve stared at him. Bucky sank back into the water, let the heat coil up around him.

 

“Need somebody to get your back?” Steve asked.

  
Bucky hummed, low, and Steve hovered over his shield for a second, but then Dernier showed up, freshly scrubbed, shaved and ready to help with the kinda vengeance of a fella too well den mothered.

Steve sat down again and Bucky looked up at Dernier.

 

He held up the washcloth without saying anything, eyebrows up, Bucky leaned forward and in the 107th he’d done plenty of bathing, but weren’t one to get bathed. Which probably woulda meant something to the Freud types, but Sergeant Barnes weren’t gonna say nothing about it.

 

“Veux-tu une cigarette?”

 

Bucky hummed and heard the shuffle and click of a cigarette getting ready. He took it from Dernier’s hands and inhaled deep. Let it warm him up from the inside and exhaled all the rot out again.

 

“What is it? J’ai...uh. Fume? Fumé? Cigarettes the same. I know fume is one of them you have not you do. Like tired. I have tired, not I am tired.” Bucky sighed and leaned back. Smoked. “Merci?”

 

“C’est rien. Et c’est _j’ai fumé une cigarette._ J'ai fumé un paquet et demi de cigarettes par jour pendant presque douze ans.  Alors que la guerre se poursuivait je n'ai fumé quequelques fois.”

 

“Bullshit,” Jones shouted over the slosh of the water. Dernier spoke again in a slur of vowels and kept his hand on Bucky’s shoulder, idly working at a knot at the base of his neck.

 

Dernier got his back all scrubbed up, until the old skin peeled off with the dirt and smell. The water went grey, and Dernier worked until Bucky felt as scrubbed down as he’d ever had before Easter Sunday.

 

He made for Bucky’s hair, not much paying attention since he and Jones were having a ball calling each other every sort of name. Bucky looked over at Steve.

 

Steve stared at his shield and hell. Dernier was a good fella. He was just trying to get the Howlers that much more close knit. He would crochet now and again, gaze out over nothing and knot his own thoughts together.

 

(Bucky’d imagined being an American in the French Resistance, with just one fella who knew English. Sat himself down to work on some mending, quiet but available. There was a small, shared language among support. Not all-encompassing, but universal in the fixing of things.Dernier’d huffed and pointed at things. “ _Fil, tricoter, corser._ ”

 

Jones and Dernier were stitched at the hip more often than not. Held onto each other’s yarn and passed poetry between each other like a smoke.)

 

Bucky bent back to look up at him, cigarette dangling free. Dernier half smiled. “Vox cheveux?”  
  
Bucky sighed, lifted the cigarette out of his mouth, and let himself get dunked in the water. Dernier started humming and after a second Bucky caught that it was Josephine Baker.

 

Bucky hummed along with and Dernier must’ve grown up musical because he switched to harmonizing without skipping a beat. Bucky didn’t much know the words, but he could remember a tune out the grave. He clucked his tongue and dug his fingers in until Bucky fell against the back of the tub and sunk deep. Smoked and tried not to find the paper version of him that could be soft for a stretch. Dernier settled for passive.

 

The water cooled quick, so he climbed out and dried off. Morita passed by and fixed his hair a bit. Dernier said something about “pas trop court.”

 

Steve handed Bucky his change of clothes. Bucky hung his dripping uniform up on the makeshift rack the fellas’d made up out of branches next to the fire. They might be dry by morning. He used a towel and scrubbed any extra off and Steve hung a moment, just… looked up and play-acted like he was working.

 

The change was Steve’d clothes, since Steve mostly wore his uniform and that was made outta some kinda weird experimental material that don’t need much tending. They were too big, sure, and that was a thought. The clean image of Steve putting on Bucky’s slacks less than a year ago, not even memory-soft. Bucky rolled up the sleeves of Steve’s rarely worn field uniform. The collar hung open and the buttons shown new.

 

Bucky slouched down next to Steve, expecting not much. Steve invested in a project weren’t a Steve that knew the rest of the world was still out there. But he smelled sweet-strong enough to cut through the wildflower-soap, chicken blood, and sweat.

 

Everybody'd circled back to the fire. Usually it was Bucky’s job to get that safe-smell started. Steve was good for plenty, but he only knew how to pack smell when he- Anyways.

 

Tonight the camp smelled calm, quiet and fresh. No more dangerous than the Barnes household with the fire going and the table fully plated. They’d expected more outta Bucky than catching Mrs. Rogers and her sickly talent-omega, but it’d come early and timing… timing was most things. The US army had demanded too late and Steve’d…

 

Well. Bucky didn’t much know what to think.

 

Steve had the low rumble of a purr that weren’t too tried-and-tested but had the whole lot of them on the damn hook anyways. The Howlers were halfway high on it, Bucky guessed, from the way they’d collapsed in on one another.

 

Nobody smoked up, like when Bucky was scent-minding. Hand on a shoulder, shove to the head, that sorta stuff. Steve’s scent filled up the whole space and Bucky sorta...leaned into it. His shoulder hit Steve’s shoulder. Steve let out a surprised rumble. Nobody said nothing.

 

“It ain’t safe for this.” Bucky muttered, and Steve got him by the back of the head. “I gotta keep my head on, pal.”

 

His muscles’d all unhooked from his bones and he hung loose under Steve’d hand, with Falsworth leaning into his space, pulling up a blanket.

 

“I gotta’n ear out.” Steve said.

 

Stark made these...these metal-y blankets that trapped heat in like nothing else. Bucky woulda killed for ‘em back in the day. Now you could curl up in your pup tent middle of winter and before you knew it you were warm as houses.

 

(“It’s a prototype. Some of ‘em catch on fire, sure. That’s the price of progress! I’m telling you. It’s going to revolutionize the whole market.” Stark’d said, laying the blanket over the table. There’d been a map, but Stark’d never much cared about the _details_.

 

Bucky didn’t want to speculate, but if God had created Stark out of his own two hands, Stark would’ve looked at the world on the eighth day and given God the means to improve it, expand it, then end it.

 

But, on the flipside, Stark weren’t the sort to delight in rubble. He wanted to _know_ , he just wasn’t much bothered by the _result._ Which, fair enough, was why Steve and the Howlers could go about their business.

 

“Imagine, none of our troops getting cold. No frostbite. No light or smoke from fires giving away location. They convert body heat to energy which in turn…”

 

He paused for a millisecond,= like he was giving any fella his God given right to tell him to shut up, then barrelled on. “Yes! Energy creates more heat and BAM. Toasty patriots facing off against frozen Huns, with less weight in the pack. Everyone can join me for a round when you get back.”

 

“You turn it into gloves yet?” Steve asked, rubbing his knuckles outta habit. Sometimes Bucky would pick up his hand and work at the knuckles outta habit, too. Some things died slow.

 

“Well.” Stark’d scratched his head. “It don’t take to tailoring too well, or you bet your ass I’d have long johns of the stuff. Barnes, ideas?”

 

“Think the Russians can reverse engineer it?” Bucky rubbed at a patch on the underside of his jaw his razor hadn’t quite caught. (He’d tried sitting down for a shave with the on-base barber. Next thing he’d known he’d been a quarter mile off base, half up a watchtower, cold to the bone and still thick with stubble. The barber hadn’t even seen him go.)

 

Stark’d made the usual Potential-Being-Threatened noises.

 

“You find a way to get this and a supply train to the Soviets and we got ourselves a ballgame.”)

 

“Yeah? You could hear a scouting party nip in real quick like that, can ya?” Bucky’d melted into Steve like one of them decorative auxiliaries in the movies. Steve’s too-strong fingers pulled his skull close. Bucky breathed out more air than a body should have, by rights.

 

“Hey,” Steve’d said, all sticky-soft. “You gotta trust somebody at some point. Why not us? We’ve put in the time.”

 

Bucky hung for a second in that blue place between where thoughts should go.

 

“I get dead and you’re the one who’s dealing with the body,” he grumbled, “you know how much a tombstone costs? I’m too pretty to rot under wood.”

 

“We’ll find each other under marble, or we’ll find each other under crows,” Steve said, no note of worry. When dirt was your fate, a fella didn't much worry what heralded his passing. A few times Bucky’d thought of burning him on pyre. Like the Vikings. He’d thought of it more, now that folks would rip Steve apart to get as his secrets. More, now, that he thought to at least let Steve be warm as he passed.

 

Bucky wondered if the crows who’d eat Steve might live longer. If they’d devour and find themselves outliving other crows and, hell, if they'd notice.

 

“Interesting note, I might add,” Falsworth collapsed into Bucky proper. On Steve’s other side was Dum Dum who had Dernier by the back of the neck, blanketed by Morita and Jones in a neat little chain. “I’ve heard it said that the term _gravestone_ is in fact derived from a Jewish custom of placing stones upon the grave to honor the deceased.”

 

Falsworth stretched with a pop and stared up at the crown of the silo. “Now, this is hearsay from an undertaker cousin of mine, bit of a black sheep, but an upright fellow by all accounts. He said that _that_ particular custom was derived from the story of Jewish fellow who broke the Sabbath, which is a bit of a beast of a thing. From what I’ve heard, that when they say _day of rest and prayer_ they are entirely serious.

 

“Though, I’m no scholar of the subject, so one could take this account with a grain of salt. But they have rules about blowing out and lighting candles and of course they’d no idea of modern technology back when all this as written. As I’m given to understand it’s really a sort of masterpiece of consideration about what is work or not. But to the point, the story of fellow in question is one where he...and if any of you know better by all means correct me, wrote down a note so as to solve a crime.”

 

“What crime?” Morita asked, “you can’t go saying crime and not say what it is. Put some juice back in the story.”

 

“Well, I don’t know for certain and I’m hardly going to say one way or another if I’ve no certainty.”

 

“Dugan, teach the guy how to tell a story wouldja?” Morita huffed.

 

“Go on, Falsworth.” Steve said. He didn’t start petting Bucky, since he weren’t the sort. He might’ve if one of them was drunk, or if Steve was… but that wouldn’t happen no more. Steve wouldn’t get confused like he used to. Folk’d fixed him.

 

Bucky shifted around to scent at him a little. He was warm, and it was turning winter. Everybody else was all cuddled up, anyways, snuggled tight and hands in hair.

 

“Well, all of this to say that the man felt guilty for the Sabbath- breaking albeit necessary act. Upon consideration decided that he should be effectively stoned after his burial. So the placing of stones become somewhat popular. Or so says my cousin, in any case.” Falsworth said and fixed his hat. Bucky slung an arm over his shoulders and felt the tense and release of a fella who weren’t use to attention.

 

“Granite,” Bucky said. “We’re all getting lump-buried under granite, like real swells. ‘Cept you Lord Falsworth, I’m guessing they got themselves a marble statue and graves six-gen deep.”

 

“I’d much rather be buried among you fellows under a wooden plank then marked with strangers by a marble statue.”

 

“Prenant part à votre douleur, je vous présente mes sincères condoléances, à vous et à votre famille.” Dernier said, or something like it. Bucky’s French recall was spotty on a good day. He was rolling up one of his weird French cigarettes that he had like aces in a rigged game. Not lighting up yet, but going through the motions.

 

Dum Dum huffed, “I’m a pig in a ballroom about French, but I have damn well picked up that you’ve no right calling us “vous” seeing as you’ve had your nose mustache-high into my neck”

 

“Un cercueil avec un allié? C’est au lit avec un ami.” Dernier slurred all together, leaning into Dum Dum, nostrils flared.

 

Jones mumbled: “He’s saying we’ll be friends in the grave.”

 

“You gonna teach the rest of us some French, Jones?” Dum Dum asked.

 

“Sure. You go on and end this war and we’ll all parlez-vous français.” Jones said, looking off past the fire. And sometimes Bucky looked at Jones and figured they were on the same station. And sometimes Bucky looked at Jones and figured he might as well be the moon. Everything in translation.

 

“Hey,” Steve said, kicking his foot against Jones’ ankle, “you trying to skip out on me? College man like you did better with the 92nd, but I’ve put in my time.”  
  
“And we hear that Barnes knows how to dance.” Dum Dum said. “Ain’t seen it, but at least you two can go be the pretty ones together."

  
“You ready to wrestle every dance hall owner you know over it?” Jones spiced with a little extra Georgia drawl, like he ain’t ever spent nights over at Howard University burning the vowels outta himself. Smoothing himself out like glass.

  
“Hey, if your side of town wants us, that’s fine with me,” Steve set his jaw, and Lord. Heaven above. If they got out of this war in at least some kinda piece, then Steve was gonna land back home with the shortest fuse and a furious explosion.

 

Jones clucked his tongue. “Pal, if America’d could be fixed by punching it, all my money’d be on you.”  
  
“Oh, I know it ain’t,” Steve sighed, “I’m just saying me and Barnes can stand behind you and glare. Like a coupla Dobermans.”

 

“I ain’t said nothing.” Bucky found his head in Steve’s lap. Embarrassing, but Sergeant James Barnes had goddamn gone on leave and left good ole’ Bucky Barnes. And good ol’ Bucky Barnes was tired.

 

“You said my, and I quote, ‘ugly mug’ might as well come to dinner so I didn’t ruin anyone else’s appetite. Which is a great invitation, especially given that it’s the _same one_ you gave _Captain America_ himself." Jones put a hand over his chest, “Sir, it’s an honor.”

 

“Goddamn _sauce_ is what I get.” Bucky muttered into Steve’s knee. “ _Lip._ ”

 

“Hmm,” Steve hummed, happy as three cows watching a turkey dinner, “Gonna wash their mouths out?”

 

“Waste of good soap,” Bucky muttered. “And you know what Stevie?”

 

“Hmm?”

 

“I’m gonna wait until there’s a USO movie in town, then watch them do push-ups until the cows thaw out.”

 

(“It’s until the cows come home!” Dum Dum protested just as Jones said: “You mean til Hell thaws out?”

 

Morita groaned: “Dudes! Please!”

  
  
“Hey! Who you calling a tourist?” Dum Dum asked and Falsworth snorted and started some long-winded story about the Scottish term of clothes being _duddies_.)

 

“Seems fair,” Steve said, quieter, and dug in Bucky’s pocket for his cigarettes and lighter.

 

“Goddamn right it does.” Bucky nuzzled into Steve’d thigh on the pretense of shifting so Steve could get at his smokes easier. Fella had to take his kicks where kicks were on offer.

 

Steve slapped the pack against his hand without knowing what in the Christ he was doing. Didn’t matter, none of them were paying Steve and him any mind.

 

Steve’s brand new government issued lungs could handle a smoke fine. Bucky thought that put paid to asthma as psychological line the docs used to feed ‘em. He’d split a smoke with Bucky, that first night out in the wilds, but said it didn’t do anything except burn on the way down.

 

Steve clicked the lighter and cupped the flame against the wind.  Steve smoked like Bucky in a mirror, matched the steps of his routine down to a beat.

 

Bucky'd reached up and stole it back. Inhaled until his lungs felt thick with smoke, and he and Steve blew smoke out towards nothing.

 

If he were a real charity case, Steve’d prop up the cigarette for him. Let Bucky smoke at his own pace. Bucky'd blow smoke rings. Dimmed out the rest of the world a stretch, kept the brain churning. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, and do push ups if you don’t.

 

Bucky stared up at him, and Steve looked back. Thinking about how he’d smudge graphite with his thumb to get the smoke curls right. Bucky hummed quiet, like they were back in Brooklyn, with the radio going. “ _The snow is snowing_ ,” Bucky sang all quiet, into Steve’s stomach. “ _The wind is blowing_.”

 

Bucky inhaled and let the song go on an exhale, though he could still hear it, running off into the trees. _But I will weather the storm._

 

They split up the watch like normal. Jones started up a game of solitaire since he could stay up as long as anybody wanted and did fine with about 6 hours of sleep. All that studying, he said. Once he was up he wouldn’t go back down for a bit.

 

Dum Dum or Falsworth you could get up any old time and be good to go in a snap, and then back down without a fuss. Falsworth was career and Dum Dum was a circus side-act.

 

(“Wait, what?” Some Private’d asked when they’d all be talking about home.

 

“Strongman in the circus,” Dugan’d repeated. “I could deadlift any one of you poor saps, and don’t you forget it.”

 

“You ran away and joined the circus?” The Private had gone all starry-eyed. "Really?”  
  
“Didja know that Honest Abe used to haul a thousand pounds of logs through his home town?  I was shoveling elephant shit along with the best of ‘em.”

 

Dum Dum had reached into his pocket and pulled out one of his souvenir photographs with him in none-all but some stripy skivvies and the hat. “You got a nail I can bend? I’ll even sign this for you.”)

 

Morita and Dernier were good early risers. Didn’t keep well late at night. They’d do it if they had to, but smoked too much and got all cottonheaded after too long. Much like anybody who’d worked on the Support Circuit.

 

Bucky and Steve you could put anywhere. Bucky, with his half-adrenaline diet, the whole: “sleep when you’re dead” took on new life. In a blind he’d take little 10-20 minute naps since losing himself for 8 hours wasn't really in the budget.

 

Steve couldn’t seem to ever sleep for long. He’d catnap around and then get up to pace, to find something to occupy himself with. But he’d sleep any old where if you left him alone for a stretch. Under tables, and on top of roofs, or hunched over his chair. Somebody would always find him a blanket, sit down, and read or whittle or whatever so nobody’d come and pester him.

 

(Bucky’d seen Carter do it once, fixing her nails while reading a report, Steve slumped over in a  chair with a coat over him.

 

Bucky’d tipped his hat and left the way he’d come.)

 

The rest of that night was all lost to a mush of nights and days here and there. He remembered the chicken part well enough. Made a good story, what with the exploding part.

 

So it got into the Howler’s pub-story rotation. Something to talk about between rounds of drinks that didn’t have a body count.

 

Then somebody’d challenge Bucky to darts, Howlers would start wringing them for the over-under. Steve’d turn a deaf ear to them betting in the ranks. Maybe fall asleep if left alone for long enough, which,

 

Hell. The entire point of the Howlers-at-base was to be bigger and louder than Steve’s whole...thing. But people would come in off the street, wander in with their noses up, cats prowling around the docks, waiting for the fishing boats to roll in.

 

(“Cat and fish?” Jones asked, “I was thinking more like porch light and moths. Figured you go for something out of your books.”

 

“They ain’t _my_ books,” Bucky grumbled. If you asked the right folks the cats lounging around the docks had a personality.

 

“It just doesn’t have flair. Monty?”

“Off the top of my head I would have guessed either something out of Greek myth - of which I was leaning more towards Icarus and the sun over Odysseus and the sirens - or, perhaps, something involving fishing.”

 

“What he know about fishing?” Morita said, “We’re onto something with the food stuff. Maybe something about a desert and an oasis.”

 

“Nah, nah, Barnes likes his forests.” Dum Dum popped an olive into his mouth. They’d found a can of Queen’s olive languishing somewhere and Dum Dum had fallen on them like they’d found an honest to god hamburger. So the Steve conversation had sprung out of the ashes of Dum Dum’s musing about Thanksgiving “celery curls” and “stuffed olives” which had derailed the lot of ‘em for a good hour.

 

“I’m thinking warm hut, winter in the forest. Any shelter in a storm. What’s the one with the kids she wants to eat. Bread crumbs? There was a candy house,” Dum Dum said.

 

A pause then, “ Les fenêtres étaient en sucre? Donc..ah.. Hansel et Grethel?”

“Hansel and Gretel,” Dum Dum agreed, smiling. “Rogers is the gingerbread house.”  
  
“No, no,” Morita waved his hand, “European stuff is always about witches. Barnes here has some kinda Changeling Woman and the Sun dynamic going on.”

 

“Yeah but you said they’re married, so that doesn’t… no I have it,” Jones clapped his hands, “Cap is the rosiest Christmas candy display window, with model trains and warm lights and the smell of roasted nuts. It’s New York-y, involved windows, and Barnes can pretend he’s pressing his face to the glass instead of being what. The shopkeeper?”

 

Bucky shook his head and flicked his cigarette butt into Jones’ beer.)

 

It was good to be useful. Didn’t know what good it’d do him outside the war, but he had it now. Maybe he’d go to state fairs like Violet had and get himself some trophies. Wouldn’t that be a thing? They could go catch outlaws out West, or head up the Alaskan territories and go feral.

 

He could teach Steve’s kids how to shoot whatever there was to shoot out west. It was nice thought, that and the brownstone in New York, or the townhome in Boston, or...hell. A manor in England or a flat in liberated Paris if that’s what it took. Europe probably needed strong fellas with a mind of rebuilding. Or they would decide to get some ranch out West and the rest of the world could figure itself out.

 

They’d get cows and grow crops of something. Eat acorn mush, rye bread, baguettes and everything else on toast.

* * *

 

**[November 1943]**

There were enough injured fellas that the medic tent sent him on his way with a pouch of sulfa powder.

 

He’d turned down morphine syrette and noted the flick of relief in the nurse’s eyes. Short on supplies. Food was going to be some kinda boiled root, no doubt.

 

> **WORLD NEWS BULLETIN HEADLINE: CAPTAIN AMERICA RESCUES AMERICANS BEHIND ENEMY LINES!**

 

People looked at Sergeant James Barnes too long. He weren't handling the stress so great. Poor little straw-filled fella.

 

Bucky smiled and bowed out the medical tent. Squeaky wheel got the grease, sure. It was the nail that stood up got hammered down.

 

Bucky looked around the bricka-brack camp, saw a shower tent and so went his feet. Middle of November showering was negative on anybody’s list, but Bucky. It'd been- He needed-

 

Sometimes a fella needed to be. It couldn't be all that cold if the shower tent was still up, was all.

 

Unless he was up a tree, rubbed over with fox piss and tree sap, Bucky at least kept a daily pit scrub. It didn’t matter, except as ranking Auxiliary he had to scent-mind the troops. Nobody wanted a walking leave with a fella who smelled like fox piss and tree sap.

 

He stripped off and took his couple minutes of creaking lukewarm water and rough soap. Coupla fellas around, all hang-dog tired and scrubbing up fast.

 

One fella stood there, under the dripping showerhead, like it was a crucifix. Poor smuck was shivering and smelled like nothing.

 

It was like somebody with food down their windpipe: as long as they were coughing it was a good sign. It was when there was nothing you had to worry.

 

Bucky walked over the rickety platform, whole thing shuddering with every step.

 

“Hey, pal,”

 

Bucky didn’t recognize him from the 107th. They’d rescued more folks than Americans, sure. But he had the worn-in look of a corn-fed Midwestern. Sort of like he’d been grown in a field.

 

Bucky’d seen CO’s slapping their troops upside the head like a radio playing static.

 

“You hearing me, solider?” Bucky said, grabbed the soldier by the back of the head. Not neck, grab a fella by the neck and he’d scratch at ya. So Bucky grabbed him up top and dragged him in. Pressed his fingers into the bristles of the fellas grown-out high-and-tight and rubbed. Thought of nicer things.

 

That’s what you always missed with the pictures, the smell of folk. Made it so all the actors could be auxilliary, though.

 

The kid collapsed into Bucky easy as a kid falling into Head of Household’s lap.

 

“Report,” Bucky asked, hand on the back of the kid’s neck.

 

“Ross, Stephan Oliver. Private,” The kid said. “17-078096.”

 

17 prefix. Kid’d sold off by his family before the mass draft and still hadn’t made it past Private. Poor idiot probably figured his whole future was a pine suit.

 

“Report, Private Ross,” Sergeant James Barnes said since he was sometimes good for something.

 

Private Ross stuttered through his last few days, capture, imprisonment, and the march. Bucky held on, fighting down the shiver.

 

“We’re back at camp, Private Ross.” Sergeant Barnes said. “Safe, sound and whole. How many fingers you got?”

 

Private Ross looked all glassy-eyed at his fingers. “Ten.”

 

“Just how we left you. Alright, how many toes?”

 

He looked down further, “eight.”

 

Bucky gripped tighter, dragged the kid’s eyes up. “You know how to count to twenty without ‘em?”

 

Ross nodded and Bucky picked up their uniforms that still stank like...everything. “You got a clean uniform somewhere?”

 

The kid stared blank, words not even getting for far as his throat. Bucky stood him up like a store mannequin and briskly dried him off with the thin, stained towels and the fella swayed on his feet. He dried off his legs, and upwards, quick and clinical.

 

Bucky paused for a second, scrubbing up Ross’s arms and neck. His hair was shorn short, but Bucky put the towel over his head and rubbed...slower? Ross rocked back on his heels a little, eyes slit down to a low, slow sleepy look.

 

The scratch of fabric over hair had them both hanging a moment. Ross closed his eyes and Bucky’d only ever kept it professional. Rubbed hands with barrier lotion. Scent-minded, plenty, but that was on offer for any fella who knew the way the wind blew. Anything above the neck was risky territory. Bucky was a little on the left side of brisk, but Ross didn't much notice.

 

Bucky took them both the laundry. He got Ross into stiff new clothes until Bucky found some scrap of Ross’ old troop and dropped him off for minding.

 

They folded him in, neat enough. Said he’d been fine when he left. Sergeant James Barnes stared them down. They ducked their heads and cuddled up on him a little better.

 

Which was all to say, that by the time he found Steve, the egg’d had plenty of time to get neck deep in it. And whaddya know? In for a penny.

 

When Bucky slunk into the back of the tent. “They had a map up-” Steve dragged up the map with x’s marked across the countryside.

 

“How accurate is this?” Colonel Phillips said, arms crossed and scowling at the map.

 

“Well, we have the same cities for landmarks, so give or take a few miles.” Steve scratched the back of his head and turned to dig in his backpack. “I drew it out in the German, smaller scale.”

 

He pulled a sketchbook out of his bag and lay it on the table. “Didn’t have a ruler, but-”

 

Everyone was leaning over the table staring at the cartography. At all the neat lines and perfect lettering and it was like a printer block. Steve’d always been good but this was… Bucky could see the stretch of it, all before him like he was flying above it. He bit the inside of his cheek and kept his damn mouth quiet.

 

They looked at Bucky, “you that Barnes kid?”

 

Steve didn’t even look up. Buck leaned in next to him, “Yeah.”

 

“He ever learn any German?”

 

“No, sir.” Bucky said.

 

They looked back at the map, at each other, at their own map. There’d be testing about this.

 

Steve’s ducked his head and smiled to himself. Bucky pulled his hat down and leaned back. This was Steve’s op and he’d run it fine without Bucky’s input.  The knot of them got all looped up with each other. Only difference between a knot and a tangle was you did one on purpose.

 

In the end, they figured if HYDRA was some rogue Nazi group, then they might as well whip up a rogue counter attack.  They weren't going to convince Steve to go back doing what he’d been doing now that he got blood in his nose.

 

“What are you doing here?” Somebody finally asked Bucky.

 

“I’m his Primary,” Bucky said. “And as he’s a Captain with a brand new commando unit, I’m thinking that means he’s got first pick of me as a skilled unit.”

 

“Ain’t you the sniper fella who rolled into basic smelling like-?” One of the Generals began, going to their desk for the paperwork.

 

Steve got red at the tips of his ears and Bucky didn’t know how to spin that, so stayed straight-faced. “You can check the paperwork, if you’d like. Got pulled in the dowry draft. Steve here might even still have the letter.”

 

(He did.  Crinkled and weather-worn in his bag.)

 

“That doesn’t make you a Primary. Rogers has to have a-” one of the brass started and then all the pairs looked at one another in a fumble.

 

“I’m a Captain,” Steve said. “You gave me a rank without a partner. According to Widower Regs, you can't revoke my rank for lack of one.”

 

Someone made noise about “honorary” and Steve’d taken his note-heavy paperwork out like he was facing a skinflint landlord.

 

Don’t let no history books say the Howlers’d been born without a few hours of labor. They’d been breech born into the world, all snarl and scream. But they’d been born. The brass got a hot flash of Steve’s kinda stubborn. Figured they’d be best pointing it at the enemy and hoping for the best. It was that sorta war.

 

Assuming there was any other kind then the ends justifying.

* * *

 

**[Who Knows Where]**

 

> “It is remarkable to think that, despite the auxiliary’s well known culpability to kindness and affection, that modern interrogation practices hinge so desperately upon fear and pain. For all that the alpha and the omega may think themselves the masters of a support’s universe: the sun and the stars guiding a swiftly tilting planet it is never been fear of pain that has guided a support’s decision. Far from it! How many stories I must have read as a boy of support diving headfirst into danger, into fires and frozen lakes. To threaten an auxiliary with pain is not great feat of mastery and will gain a person no significant information.
> 
> “Far more effective, I have found, is to talk with a support in a gentle, conversational tone. This is not to be confused with how one might speak to a child, or a pet. Any human to fight for their fellow soul must be given their due respect and treated as the professional they are. And this sort of thing cannot be scripted or acted, one must truly attempt to connect and understand a soul that one is trying to get information from. It is in the auxiliaries toolbox to sniff out dishonesty and to know when they are being cheaply flattered. Any attempts at false kindness, or salesmanship, will net an integrator nothing more than the usual name, rank and serial number. My success did not once come from acting, but only from a genuine interest in my fellow soldiers and of using every gesture of good faith available to me. To do less is a disservice and will gain the average integrator nothing of great use to the service of their country.
> 
> [...]
> 
> “I have been told honey gathers more flies than vinegar, but it is not my interest to gather flies. When asked Jesus told a priest who our neighbor was. So he told the parable of the Good Samaritan, which you may know. I was told a support was, in the service of his pack, going from Jerusalem to Jericho and was beset by robbers. They were cruel, as robbers are, and left him with nothing and badly hurt. In this way he was found by a priest, or a… hmm. The word escapes me, but a religious teacher. This great teacher saw the beaten support and went to the other side of the road. Do you think the support thought kindly of the priest? No! He is no better for that and now thinks less of the entire profession. But! Ah, but. A Samaritan came by the man. A person of Samaria who has not a reason to help, yet he does!
> 
> The Samaritan bandages the traveler’s wounds. Pours him oil and wine and places this beaten support on his own donkey. And they what does the man from Samaria do? He goes to an inn and pays from his own purse than this beaten support be taken care of.
> 
> And Jesus finished this story and asked his people: who was a good neighbor? And of course, it is the Samaritan. But here is the bigger question: Who gained the most from the traveler? The robbers for having robbed? The priest for having not been bothered? Or the man who paid money of his own wallet to help this stranger? Ah, yes. I will tell you: if that Samaritain asked the world of that support, he would have gotten it.
> 
> So, do not be the robbers. Do not be the priest. Go in as the Samaritan and you will gain the world.”
> 
> -Jonathan Sharp “The Interrogator” (1949)


	2. Intermission

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's all go to the lobby / Let's all go to the lobby / Let's all go to the lobby / To get ourselves a treat / Delicious things to eat / The popcorn can't be beat / The sparkling drinks are just dandy / The chocolate bars and the candy / So, let's all go to the lobby / To get ourselves a treat / Let's all go to the lobby / To get ourselves a treat! 
> 
> Which didn't actually exist until 1957, but if a person quietly sings something to themselves whilst creating a thing, that thing should perhaps be mentioned.

A stretch after Steve’s ma died Walt Disney decided to roll out Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. Steve’d done a real good job at trying to muscle through grief. Like you could smother a feeling in the cradle, if only you bit down.

 

Bucky’d been feeling the death, yeah. He was treading water. But Steve was still in the water, nose bobbing in and out. Steve'd had a pack of two (and sorta Bucky) and he went down to only sorta having Bucky.

 

He’d been all loose hand-me-downs and frown, those days. The two of them bundled up in the middle of December to got to the cinema. Bucky'd budget notebook bled red, but well. Sometimes a fella’d find a dime in the gutter or a lucky penny on the train. It came out in the wash.

 

Bucky’d sat there, right along with Steve, and it’d been a nice movie. Nice little songs to whistle while you worked. And he'd been real excited about a feature length animated film. Figured it held the key to a future where anything could be on screen if only some fella drew it.

 

They'd put their time in. Gone to see the rest of the Disney Silly Symphonies where they could, right along with Bosko and Betty Boop.

 

“Look at the color,” Steve’d say. Point to The Three Little Pigs while Bucky’d had that goddamn Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf stuck in his head for an age. Steve talked about color the way Bucky might talk about a good horn solo. Talked about how the Evil Queen and Snow White wore the same colors as each other: backward and upside down.

 

Bucky’d gone to the library and picked up some anthology of fairy tales. It'd been rotting off in a corner somewhere, no illustrations and dry as bone text. He’d read it between customers buying smokes at the little cigarette stand he’d manned back then. Read about Snow while tapping his fingers to Someday. People’d been buying the soundtrack where they could, he’d heard it playing out of windows. Folks dancing to it in halls, where Bucky’d been learning to hoof it.

 

A story then.

 

A real story.

 

Once upon a time, right before the Season, an Alpha Queen was watching her handmaiden sewing. Outside snowflakes were falling from the sky like feathers. She asked the handmaiden to open the window, so she might feel the weak summer sun on her face. The cold wind blew in and the Alpha Queen rested her feet next to the roaring fire. The Primary pricker her finger and the blood beaded up against the snow, smelling of ice and iron. The Queen stood to look outside. Gazed upon the winter gardens fields, the black trees clawing against the bolt gray sky.

 

The contrast was lovely, the Queen thought to herself: if only I had an heir. White as snow, red as blood, and black as winter trees.

 

The King and Queen had cared for the orphans of their kingdom, as was their duty. They groomed them and watched those that might be their successor.

 

And yet she so dearly wished and hoped for a creation of her blood and bone.

 

So the season came, and the season went and she found herself pregnant. 

 

And upon the birth, she had whelped one, single pup. As white as snow, as red as blood, and black as ebony. The birth was terrible, painful and long, and the Queen held her child for only a moment before she passed. The King passed shortly thereafter from grief and misery. So they left their pack, reeling and lost. In the confusion, their Primary took the place of Regent over the small, strange child.

 

And so the years passed,

 

In the haunt and madness of the castle, there was a mirror. For lack of direction, the Primary would stand before it and ask:

 

“Silvered Mirror wise and true,

 

without me what would this kingdom do?”

 

The mirror would reply:

 

“That is but a terrible tale,

 

without you, it would crumble and fail.”

 

So satisfied, she continued on. She knew the mirror could speak nothing but the truth. So she ruled as Regent, in the stead of Snow White. The Crown Princess was young and carefree, well cherished and cosseted by the palace.  Sweet and empty as a doll, the False Queen thought. And soon the Regent thought herself the True Queen and satisfied herself with this.

 

And so the years passed. The kingdom continued. Shepherded onwards by the promise of true rulers. It did not grow, but neither did it fail.

 

Snow White grew and learned and learned. Still smiled as sweet as the Spring breeze while the False Queen ruled.

 

When Snow White began to come of age she was as soft as down, thoughtful as night and rosy with health.

 

The  False Queen went to her mirror and asked:

 

“Silvered Mirror wise and true,

 

without me what would this kingdom do?”

 

The mirror replied

 

“My queen’s use wanes as the years have passed

 

Soon the True Queen will reign at last!”

 

When the False Queen heard these words she trembled and took pale with fear. She’d fallen in love with her own use and thought not of her charge and kingdom.

 

(And the movie’d glossed over a lot of that. Kept the mirror, sure. Turned the False Queen into an Evil Witch, all angles. Sharp crown, sharp collar, long thin eyebrows, sharp nails, and sharp cheekbones. Look at any comic: angles were shorthand for villain and roundness for a hero. The dark, theatrical makeup they'd piled on for the Technicolor of it all.)

 

From that moment on the False Queen feared and hated Snow White.

 

Whenever she set eyes on her, her stomach turned cold with terror. She kept her scent quiet and sweet, encouraged Snow White to sit in a dark library and study. Hired her tutors for any odd thing that grabbed her attention.

 

Snow White would look up from her studies and smile, say thank you, as light and sweet as a bird song. Her tutors had only glowing praise. When the Crown Princess walked among the people if was as if flower grew from her footsteps.

 

Terror and need soured the False Queen’s heart. Day and night she never had a moment’s peace, thinking of the day when Snow White would grow into her own and marry a King. Some support turned into resplendent fine wine when left to cure. The False Queen turned to vinegar.

 

One day she summoned a huntsman and said: The Princess wanted to guidance through the wilderness. The Huntsman swore he would guide her well. And when he left, the False Queen set herself to work on her terrible plot.

 

Snow White and the Huntsman spent the day with the flowers.  The False Queen had supplied them for their trip. Unbeknownst to the Huntsman, she'd drugged the bottle of wine. The drugs designed to addle his wits and cause him to fall into a blood rage.

 

The Huntsman drank her wine and ate her food. The drug first confused the Huntsman into wandering deeper and deeper into the woods. Snow White, focused on her quiet study, did not notice the change in her companion. Soon they were far away from the city and the path.

 

The Huntsman began to sniff at trees, scratching at his clothes. When she approached him, he snarled, jumping away. He raised his hunting knife and sliced at her, but instead sliced off a scrap of her dress and her hair.

 

Snow White ran away, splashed into a stream and passed a feeding boar, who paid her no mind. The Huntsman fell upon the boar in a rage and fury, while Snow White ran deeper and deeper into the unknown.

 

The Huntsman killed the boar. Gorged himself on the raw meat, holding the heart and lungs in his hands as he wandered away to den down.

 

When he woke from his drugged stupor, covered in blood, he found Snow White's dress caught in his sleeve. He immediately thought the worst, and, bound by duty, trudged back full of woe and heartache. He went to the False Queen and offered her his knife, declaring he had gone mad and killed the Princess.

 

The False Queen, who had gone to her Mirror that day, knew that the Princess lived. But she made an example of the Huntsman. She gave a grand speech and declared the state in mourning, herself in yards of black. The state was too heartbroken to pick a new heir that the old King and Queen might have approved. So the country wreathed itself in grief, while the False Queen plotted her next step.

 

And so Snow White woke. She could not follow the river downstream back to her city, as it went underground and out of view.

 

So she followed it upstream towards the mountains. She walked until her shoes fell off and her gown ripped. She ate wild berries and nuts, foraged for wild mushrooms and drank from the river. She slept in the embrace of trees and shadowy hollows.

 

Her feet bled and turned to blister and she shuddered in the cold of the night. Until, at last,  she found a small, queer cottage at the edge of a mountain. Her journey left her weak, bleeding and in a state unknown to her. She thought that if she could find someone, they'd return her home and her people would award them,

  
  


The cottage was a snug thing, tucked into the rocks. Someone had crafted it from out of a living tree and the stone along the cliff face.

 

She approached it packed full of curiosity. A sweet heart beating strong in her chest, with no thought of evil curling in her head. She bent and peered in through the sparkling, reflective windows. They were not glass, nor oiled paper, but a strange sparkling crystal that didn’t allow her to look outward. They caught her mind on fire. She knocked on the door a full head above the doorway. The door had no lock and swung open at her inquiry.

 

She went inside and through the crystal windows saw the world as clean as if they were not there at all. She sat down in one of the small chairs, staring out the window. She itched so for one of her journals, but then looked upon the cottage.

 

There were seven chairs at the table, with seven bowls already set out, and seven goblets beside them.

 

On the fireplace, over the embers, bubbled a meaty stew.  Snow White stirred it, stomach grumbling. She took one of the small bowls and ate her fill, before washing it out. 

 

She was very tired from her journey, her feet blistered and bloodied. But she went out a gathered berries from around the cottage and placed them in a pretty earthenware bowl. She gathered a basket of meaty mushrooms from around the base of trees. She returned and broke them apart and into the bubbling stew. She went tot eh well and drew out more water to mix in.

 

At last, she could go no further and collapsed into the large bed snug against the wall.

 

(And this was why Snow White was one of Bucky’s favorites. The idea of that little cottage, with its stew and magical windows and that big, comfy bed with room for everyone. Steve’d drawn him all sorts of filth, back when he’d been using Bucky as his main model.

 

Bucky’d pose any old way. He could be still as any of them models at the art college, take any of the poses of them Greek statues. It’d be his one day off and he’d spend it going into all kinds of nonsense poses while Steve sketched. It’d been… It was a good memory to curl up into.

 

One of them had been Bucky curled up in the pillows and Steve’d made the bed seven times as big, like with the dwarves.

 

Bucky’d pressed that sketch close. Spiralled it up in all kinds of daydreams. He’d caught Steve frowning down at it, now and again. Probably wondering why Bucky kept it around.)

 

As night fell the owners of the cottage returned. They were seven dwarves who spent their days in the mountains mining ore. They put away their seven pickaxes, picked up their seven bags, and lighted their seven lanterns. As they approached their cozy little cottage they saw the muddy footprints at the stoop. Dwarves couldn't smell as well as people, but they had keen eyes from finding gems and gold.

 

They crept up close. The first put his foot against the footprint. The second put his nose to the crystal and peered in. The third raised his nose and tracking the smell of Something New around the cottage and into the woods. The fourth yawned and sat down, waiting for someone to tell him what to do. The fifth hung back near the fork in their little path and held onto his bag of minerals and ore. The sixth and seventh put everyone's findings into the shed next to the cottage. Dwarves loved little more than they love ore and minerals.

 

“It is one of the human folk, but a small one,” said the first dwarf.

 

“They are asleep next to our fire!” Exclaimed the second.

 

“They smell of endings,” Said the third, rubbing their nose and scowling.

 

“I am very tired, might we go in now?” Asked the fourth.

 

“Oh I am scared, someone else should go first,” quaked the fifth.

 

“Look at all the emeralds we found!” The sixth said, paying the rest of them no heed.

 

“Oh, I am hungry,” The seven mourned, “I smell stew still, so might we enter and eat?"

 

And so they entered and saw Snow White’s bloody feet, the berries on the table, and the rich stew. 

 

They also had, now, the smell of something they had little experience with.

 

Dwarves were born from mountains.  when they died, would go into the mines and turn to stone. But above all, they loved beautiful and useful things. Upon seeing the Princess, all seven fell in love and immediately rushed about to set her a place at the table.

 

When Snow White woke it was to seven wide eyes of seven wee fellows.

 

“Oh hello,” She said and told them the whole sorry tale. And the dwarves, so smitten, bandaged her feet and fluffed her pillows. They agreed with one another that they had found themselves the best of gems and that they must fashion themselves as a necklace.

 

And so Snow White healed and told them such stories from her reading. The dwarves found her beautiful things from the mines.

 

She thought she might bring these findings back to her kingdom in time, so academic was she.

 

But the False Queen saw Snow White still lived. Her return would ruin any plan she might craft. And so she studied dark and terrible books and came upon a drug that would put someone in an ever lasting stupor.

 

She then asked the Silvered Mirror to show her where Snow White resided. Snow White frolicked among the dwarves, who had worked to fashion her a workshop and library of her own.

 

And so the False Queen disguised herself as an old crone so traveled to where the seven dwarves lived. She knocked at the door:

 

“Well made wares for a good price

Very good quality whatever your vice.”

 

And so the False Queen disguised herself as an old crone so traveled to where the seven dwarves lived. She knocked at the door:

 

“Well made wares for a good price

 

Very good quality whatever your vice.”

 

By now, Snow White had fixed many small ailments of the house. Most that the dwarves had been too busy to remedy, or hadn't the means to fix.  And so she found herself in need of more supplies and projects.

 

“Good day, what are you selling?” Snow White said, peeking around her door. The False Queen had sewn in fake smelling hair and covered her face and body with dirt and strong smelling oils.  Snow White allowed her in the house, not the least suspicious because she had a good and caring heart. She fed the old woman, allowed her to put her feet next to the fire. The False Queen finally pulled a comb from her robes.

 

"My dear, your hair is a fright. Might I fix it while you shop?"

 

Snow White looked, and thought of her seven dwarves, neat and braided, and agreed.

 

As soon as the comb touched her hair Snow White fell over as if dead. She slipped out of the house and rushed away.

 

(The movie changed it to an apple. You couldn’t go showing hair brushing in a film. The Brother’s Grimm’d had this whole thing with a corset, the comb and then the apple. 

 

_ "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die." _ Said Genesis 3:3 according to goold ole’ King James.

 

Nowhere did it say apple any more than anybody said Humpty Dumpty was an egg. The apple was probably a pomegranate and the egg was probably a canon. But here they were. Being a know-it-all got half as far as a quick foot and an easy smile.

 

The movie and the clergy focused on the apple, and Bucky focused on the comb. Oh, you think Pastors didn't grasp on that bit of symbology and bring it home? You ain't sat through enough sermons.)

 

As evening fell, and the seven dwarves came home. They saw their beloved Snow White lying on the ground. they rushed forward. Not a breath of air was coming from her lips. They took the comb from her hair, washed it with water and wine, but it was in vain. The dear child was dead and nothing could bring her back. They placed her on briar and all seven mourned her. They were about to bury her in the cave, as was the way of dwarves. Except she looked so alive they thought she must not really be dead. So they fashioned a crystal coffin and made a gold plate with her name.

 

They set it atop the mountain and read her books and fashioned her new trinkets. She did not decay and continued to look as if she were sleeping, even as the years passed.

 

One day the Alpha son of the king in the neighboring kingdom lost himself in the woods. He had been traveling towards Snow White’s kingdom, following some rumor. He'd found the road impassable and so he'd set about making a new one.

 

The Alpha prince had set off in search of a mate. He had not been able to find a mate anywhere. As the snows of the mating season fell, he decided to venture forth and find himself an ending. He followed the sound of reading and found the dwarves cottage, and Snow White still in her coffin. Her chest did not rise and her eyes did not flutter. But she looked so still as if carved from the mountain itself.

 

“Let me have the statue,” he said, “I will grant you any boon in the world for it.”

 

"She is not a statue!" Said dwarf, stumbling upwards.

 

“She is our beloved Snow White!” The second dwarf said, joining all the other dwarves came to see what the noise was.

 

They held up their lanterns and pickaxes and stood firm.

 

"This is the dead Princess?" The Prince said, knowing the name. But she looked so perfect, so untouched. "but it has been years!" 

 

The Prince bowed his head. Not a whiff or curl of scent escaped the crystal coffin, but still, he looked at her and felt his heart swell.

 

The dwarves raised their pickaxes. Dwarves are not made of the same material as man or beast. They are as steady and unwavering as the peaks and cliffs. They would come and check on Snow White so long as the world stood.

 

“It would be cruel to separate you," He stepped back, draw his steed with him. He had ever intention of goodness, but could no more tear his eyes away than the moon could leave the sky.

 

The dwarves kept their station next to the coffin. The Prince turned to leave. Every step he took grew heavier until he could move no more. 

 

"But if we take her to my kingdom we may have wise men and doctors. It's possible they could cure her."

 

The dwarves looked at one another and then at the Prince.

 

“We would come along,” Said the first dwarf.

 

“And if we do not like your wise men we might leave?’ Asked the second.

 

“This smells like the start of something,” complained the third, rubbing their nose.

 

“Oh, it is not a far walk, is it?” Moaned the fourth, leaning upon his axe.

 

“Oh, but we have never left these mountains!” The fifth exclaimed.

 

“Are their good jewels there?” The sixth wondered, looking upon the prince and wishing for him to wear jewelry so he might be examined.

 

“I do so miss our Snow White,” The Seven murmured.

 

And so they began to travel back to his kingdom. His sturdy horse pulled a clever wagon, the dwarves going before to clear a path. They walked for many days until a storm came upon them and they could trek no more.

 

They set up camp as best they could with the wind and the snow, but it blew the coffin from the wagon and it cracked, then shattered.

 

Snow White lay crumpled on the ground, soft as sleep. The snow soaked into her hair, pressed against her face and, at long last, released her from the poison. 

 

She startled awake in the storm. The seven dwarves crowded around her, pulling her into the warmth and coven in their shelter. She and the Prince fell in love and by the end of the season, they were married.

 

As time came they returned to Snow White’s kingdom. The people rejoiced and she was crowned, and the Kingdoms were joined. The seven dwarves took their seats as her royal pack, ousting the False Queen. She ran to the woods, wracked with guilt.

 

(Bucky’d watched that movie. And Steve’d been there all about the animation, eyes wide and tracking the movement, the detail, the color. Bucky’d half-listened to the music. Every time he'd thought: Snow White’d been happy enough reading and fiddling with rocks. Her people seemed happy enough getting ruled by the support.

 

At some point, you just had to stop picking at things. Let them heal over.

 

But that didn’t make a good movie. The Disney version also had more magic than any of the versions Bucky’d read.  Smoke and mirrors made for good watching, and what was more useful than a magic beta?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next section of the next part is as long as Auxilliary. So this happened. To prove I'm alive.
> 
> Please feel free to yell at me under the same name on Tumblr, or feel free to look at the amazing experience of Quietnight's http://archiveofourown.org/works/11432520 fanart of a potential future of this series where Bucky at long last gets to just Mom the Heck of out the grumpiest babies God ever spit down onto creation. 
> 
> Those babies will beat you up and steal your wallet.


	3. Chapter 3

**[February 1944]**

It was funny how fast a bunch of fellas just tossed together became a pack. Didn’t work all the time, mind. Sometimes you’d throw a lot of folk together and you’d get yourself two growling mobs. It’s why the army worked so hard to soften them up some first. You get people starving and they wouldn’t make much fuss over what you fed them.

Here they were and somehow, in the thick of it, all of ‘em had the same stupid instinct that made them look at Steve’s weird plans and go: yeah. Alright.

So here: they’d humped it all the way to Czechoslovakia in goddamn February. Bucky had himself six rolls of heavy, wool socks some long johns, and a whole winter uniform so it wasn’t as bad as it’d been before.

Now, normally, they might have some bombers if they were well-turned. Maybe some artillery to bombard the armaments. At least some tanks to roll in. They had a HYDRA base out there and it looks like a goddamn castle standing out there in the snow.

Instead, they surveyed it from some bushes, Steve looking through his binoculars and handing it to Falsworth who hummed to himself.

“We going to pick them off? Wear ‘em down?” Dum Dum asked. “If we get Barnes in the trees the rest of us can nip at them. Run them down.”

“Dernier can get the roads,” Jones offered. “We can starve them down.”

Steve nodded and took the binoculars back. “When did it last snow?”

“Four days ago,” Falsworth reported because Falsworth had a head for that sort of thing.

“No tracks on the road. HYDRA broke off from the Nazi’s, so they don’t have a logistic supply route. They have to be eating somehow.”

“You believe they have a supply town?”

“I didn’t see any amber waves of grain on the topographical report. Let’s look around.”

After a good bit of hunting, they found the town. It wasn’t pleased about soldiers milking them down to wet bones and stone soup. The farms were all family operations, not exactly sprawling fields of wavering grain either, certainly not now in the solid cold of February. Steve showed up with a small bear slung over his shoulders and a bag of sweets.

Bucky’d read once that it took an entire village just to raise one swordsman, back in the day. More than that to keep a knight fed. HYDRA, no doubt, had stocked up when they cut themselves off the Nazi teat, but stores didn’t last forever.

They made barrels with false bottoms and practiced jumping inside in a hurry, waiting for HYDRA to come knocking again.

From there they’d waited. Got out of the way, mostly. Hid in the woods, and brought in hunting when they found any, mostly stringy game birds. The village had been happy about the bear but kept cooking it in secret so HYDRA didn’t come knocking and asking after the newfound food.

When folks realized the Howlers were going to leave well enough alone they offered food, which they declined, and a place to sleep, which they accepted. The town put them up in a barn: not fine lodging, but sturdy and got them out of the wind. It had a wood stove some sheep stubbornly chewing on bark and twigs out of a stubborn sort of survival instinct.

They’d waited. Darned their socks and mended tears in their cuffs. Kept a watch out. Chopped wood and kept an eye out for sheep. Hid out of the way and Bucky stayed up at the highest point for miles, roosted and watched. Found a sheep trapped in a bramble and brought it back.

Once in a while, he’d feel a shudder in his gut. A...change in the wind maybe. He’d whistle down and the Howlers would get out of sight and sometimes, there’d be some kind of movement from the base. An expulsion of smoke or some tremor that rocked through all the way to them. And then it’d go quiet and they’d go back to what they were doing. Hurrying up and waiting.

He bundled up. Long johns, socks, mittens, hat, a scarf and a blanket some old woman had thrown at him. He watched. He breathed.

There’d be a flick of movement and a pheasant would bolt through the undergrowth, thin, angry and pecking a the world the same as the rest of them.

He swung his gun around before he knew he’d seen somebody else. It was just Morita. Come to work on one of his carvings and not say much. The Howlers didn’t much like leaving him alone to wait. They also didn’t know much how to keep the Sergeant company.

“Falsworth and Cap are circling in closer to see if there are any other entrances,” Morita said, taking his knife out and working on a little whittled something. “A sewer or something.”

Bucky crinkled his nose but resettled. He’d seen them leave, the two of them slightly different specks against the landscape, before they’d folded in the woods again. A rustle of bushes along the tree line.

Morita kept him company, but his own counsel. Bucky always figured that if a fella wanted to say something, then he would. Morita was usually fine sitting near somebody and doing something for himself. He stayed until Steve took over his shift.

“What’d you carve?” Bucky asked and Morita held up one of the angry looking pheasants and Bucky huffed. “At least a baby can chew on that for a while.”

Morita smiled to himself and headed back to the barn.

Steve clambered up next to Bucky. “No other ways in we could find. We’ll take the Eastern side tomorrow.”

Bucky hummed. “They’ll come down again. Folks are putting the animals they trap to the side. They’re getting ready for something.”

Steve rubbed his eyes. “You think the hiding in barrels plan is the best one?”

“Well. They won’t be expecting it, so there’s that.” Bucky said. “We don’t have time to wear them down, so let’s use cat tactics.”

Steve yawned and Bucky left him alone long enough for Steve to slump half asleep. He’d wake up when he needed to.

A day or two more of that and eventually Bucky’d spotted movement coming away from the base. The lot of them had gotten into their disguises and waited. Bucky’d held onto his gun, sat with his goddamn knees right up against his ears as they got roped into the back of the van, the agents not saying a word about how heavy the barrels were because HYDRA goons weren’t exactly top thinkings. They’d rattled down the road. He wondered how the Greeks felt, a day in their wooden horse waiting to see if Athena or the Trojans took ‘em.

They’d hit base with a clatter. Got bounced into a cart and shuffled down. Bucky listed for trouble, the potatoes shaking above him and eventually they got unloaded. They waited.

They’d ended up in a supply room. Steve’d tapped quietly on a barrel and they waited. No footsteps. No noises. Bucky heard Steve free himself. The soft thump of potatoes against the floor.

He tapped his shield lightly and it rang eerie and familiar against the concrete. The rest of them had followed. Looked at the storeroom packed with food. Enough to wonder: alright, they had weapons that Stark couldn’t figure out, sure. But where were they supplying from? At least looting this would do some good.

Steve’d tucked that away for later, the way he did everything these days. It was the lot of them moving forward, listening to rhythmic paths of patrols walking and the clank and clatter of an army mess hall. Steve bent and listened at the door, gestured Dernier over and the rest of them got their handkerchiefs up and caps down.

The best way to HYDRA was with noise and clarity. Denier rolled grease-smoke bombs right into the kitchen and rest of them got low into the muck spread themselves like a goddamn termite nest through the rest.

Bucky wasn’t going to author any of Steve’s biographies, but he always figured everything after the set-up of a plan didn’t make for good reading. Or, at least, history books at home had kept it simple. This battle was fought for this many days. This many folk died. This side won. Broke it down to baseball stats, with a diagram if you were lucky. Just blood and mess and acting like a hook in the cheek. They got banged up a bit, but no holes in them and nothing broken. When it came to writing it all down for the ivory tower folks, then you just needed to edit around things a little. No sense worry the folks playing along at home.

Reality: There’d been a retracting ladder up to the second floor. So Bucky’d run at Steve, expecting a boost. Steve’d dropped to one knee, sure, but bent down with the shield and flung him about six feet higher than Bucky’d been ready for. Bucky’d gone sailing through the air and instead of grabbing the lowest rung of the ladder, got it right in the middle and the whole thing...unretracted.

“Sarge!” Jones shouted up. “We could use some-” And then the end of the ladder clapped the squid Jones’d been dealing with and Bucky and Jones’d stared at each other a second and Jones stared at the body and Bucky looked down at it and then he’d been climbing the ladder and Jones’d been onto the next fella.

He’d climbed to a vantage point, wrapped his legs around and steadying himself and got his fellas out of their in one piece like he was supposed to.

 **Read:** Sergeant Barnes provided cover fire from the higher ground.

Dernier’d been on grease duty, so kept rolling them down hallways and into dorms. It was terrible stuff in those grease bombs. Got in your lungs and nose and you’d be sneezing out grey for a few days after. Stained like a bad day’s work and smelled like it too.

But squids wore goggles and heavy masks to a man. Stopped any of them from choking on gas, sure. But they also wore leather gloves that would just smear the grease in. They couldn’t smell and the masks muffled their hearing, so then it went from a firefight to a shooting down...well he’d say chickens, but the chickens had been worse in their way.

Grease was like a fever. Might kill a fella, sure, but it’d burn out the sickness too. Worse came to worse the grease caught like the Dickens and made smoke like a dream. Great for a sudden escape.

Jones and Dum Dum’d gone down to loosen the prisoners to raise a little hell. Support town said they’d been marching people in Or mimed it anyways since it was like any of ‘em spoke much of the local flavor.

Morita and Falsworth’d headed to barricade the doors so HYDRA was just looping around, trapped and half blind. Prisoners turned out to be civilians instead of soldiers but not too much worse for the wear considering...everything.

That bit always stayed in. Folks loved when the Howlers liberated something. Papers could run stories about families coming together, crying and celebrating, provided the details of the op got out at all.

(In reality, the town had stood, blank-eyed and hollow-cheeked when they’d brought what they could back. You eat suffering too long, and joy didn’t sit right on the tongue anymore.)

So they’d have to tell a certain version of the op to reporters, for PR and the like. They’d run it and it’d make folks think their fellas had an edge out here.

It was just the writing it down for the brass where it got a little sideways. The Howlers were… specialized. You judged a fish by his ability to climb, and you’d get yourself a tree surrounded by rotten fish.

**The Howlers: Ranked By Who Should Type Up Anything For The Brass**

**Ideal.) Carter**  
**Pros:** Knew how to write The Brass a report with all the pertinent narrative beats and none of the parts that’d get a fella into trouble, mostly from experience.

 **Cons:** Kept getting sent off to the shit end of the universe to do the devil’s own work. Wasn’t technically a Howler and they weren’t about to throw her in for anything other than something that was both high need and low(er) risk.

 **1.) Falsworth.**  
**Pros:** He’d been born with marching orders. He could type up a report half-asleep, so long as you got the typewriter close enough.

 **Cons:** Tended to be a little too literal about Steve's methods.

 **Example:** This report is intended to describe and assess the actions of Captain Steve Rogers and his auxiliary command during the events of the January 1944 operations in which the enemy base was infiltrated through the use of traps laid with shop mannequins placed throughout the woods.

 **Follow Up:** (Why’d the mannequins?) They were readily available. (What was your plan before that?) Well, it hardly matters, as we found some mannequins. You know the mark of a good leader is their ability to improvise and effectively communicate it. Back in 1934, I remember I had been under this dreadfully by-the-book pair who didn’t deviate from marching orders even though a river had been diverted right into our path. We lost four good souls to easily preventable sickness for that transgression.

 **2.) Jones.**  
**Pros:** From what Bucky could tell, you couldn't walk across campus without needing to write some kinda analysis about it if you were a college man. So he could make Steve’s “found a bookshelf, threw a bookshelf” style seem more like “KNEW a bookshelf would be there, PLANNED to throw the bookshelf.”

 **Cons:** Well, then you had to sort of backtrack from the result to the inception. That sort of gymnastics could get a fella in trouble.

 **Example:** H.B entered the mess hall (see attached) via a small tactical explosion, covered by the sound of fire directed at H.A.

 **Follow Up:** (Well, how’d you know where the mess hall’d be?) Reconnaissance by Dernier inside a barrel. He then caused a flour explosion and opened it for the rest of Howler Group B. (Why’d you sneak him in a barrel?) Well, we found a barrel. (How many barrel related missions does this make?) Keeping count could be considered prideful. (How many?) Four.

 **3.) Dernier.**  
**Pros:** It was all in French.

 **Cons:** Once it was translated it focused on what exploded and how. It was what interested Dernier, so it was what he remembered.

 **Example:** “ _Au contact du sol, il a explosé. Le calmar a perdu sa jambe gauche, à partir du bas du genou._ ”

 **Follow Up:** (What were you doing there?) _On les a tués, c’est ca?_ (Yes, but what were you doing there?) _Nous les avons tués._ Par le feu _._ (Alright. Fine. What else did you do?) _Qui s’en soucie?_

**4.) A Series Of Equally Terrible Choices:**

**4a.) Sergeant Barnes:** He could report to brass who he’d sent to the devil, and that his pack was accounted for. What were they doing? Killing squids. What else did they do? Here are the bars of the killed leaders for my bonus, and this head since he hadn’t been in uniform.

 **4b.) Dum Dum:** Liked to grandstand. The world was a stage and the Howlers were the hot sideshow on the books. The bit where they almost died because there was some kinda magical tank? That was what Dum Dum relished. He’d sort of make it like Steve was some kinda… adventure hero. Which was great for pulps, and maybe newsreels back home. Not so great if a fella wanted a lot of funding and not so much oversight.

 **4c.) Morita:** No power on earth would make that fella write so much as a requisition request. Did you want to pass information in secret? Better learn the... What was it? West Coast Diné sign language dialect, that was it. Was as good as a lab assistant when it came to remembering the sorts of things Bucky’d always had to jot down. (“You need to darn your socks.” “What?” “Your socks from Thursday. You wore through the toe and said you needed to fix ‘em before you forgot.” “Oh right.”)

He would bribe you with cigarettes to write a letter to his ma for him. She didn’t mind too much that the handwriting was always different and Morita would read her letters just fine. But God could come down and demand he jot a note and Morita’d shrug and turn to Jones with a: “Looks like it’s for you.”

**4d.) Steve:**

**Would:** get on his soapbox about whatever Joan of Arc’s angels started muttering to him about since he was a modern day La Pucelle de Azzano. If this war had 100 years in it, weren’t gonna be enough folk left to fight it. **Would not:** successfully journal the full scope of the op, it’s parameters, goals, and outcomes.

 **5.) Bucky**  
Nobody’d tell them the batting scores. The Howlers weren’t on the front, and so they didn’t need to know how the front was going. They knew about as much as an old granny back home knitting mittens for the boys in the field.

So Bucky had to keep himself informed. His favorite way was to tuck himself into a corner and listen while some in-the-know fellas talked shop. They didn’t worry themselves with a body who’d dozed off the in the corner.

(“Ah, that’s just one of the comic book soldiers,” one of them SSR goons said, ignoring him and Carter both. “Look at him. Tuckered himself out in a photoshoot, I’ll bet.”

“You think they’ll get back home, or is brass going to lock them in a lab somewhere?” said the other, shuffling through paperwork.

“The psychology of cast-offs? That’d be a read.”

“Would you mind gossiping elsewhere?” Carter had interrupted before Bucky could get anything to chew on.

She’d shown up a full twenty minutes after Bucky had picked his target and gotten himself settled into a nice quiet table. She’d come in and Bucky’d smelled a stranger, but heard familiar heels and pinned it as Carter. He’d kept slumping in his seat, despite the sort of crick in his back.

“Some of us are attempting to win a war,” She’d added, and Bucky heard an eyebrow go up. But he’d kept on pretending to sleep. Back home if he’d faked being asleep well enough, he could get Steve to dote on him a touch. Put a blanket up over his shoulders, or pet his hair a little, like his Ma used to.

Carter, however, didn't trade in wooden nickels. She tossed a pen at him once they were alone in the tent. He’d let it smack him in the head.

“Ow.”

“You’ve got excellent scent control, but you carry too much tension in your jaw.” She’d said. If the world were a noir novel, it would've meant he had worse tells than that.

Carter was the Noir type of dame with a trump card up her sleeve but still made sure to count cards. “Try letting your tongue relax from the roof of your mouth.”

Bucky’d been trying to sort her out since they'd hit camp in November. Steve had strolled straight up to her without missing a beat. He’d talked to her like it was down a beaten path. No grasping for words or puffing himself up behind a cause. He’d just held up his broken radio and joked, and she’d looked up at him and tucked a smile into the side of her cheek.

Bucky’d stared at them and felt the sharp vertigo of a wish getting granted.

He hadn’t been able to scent her over the noise and clatter, so he’d… turned up the volume. Give it up for Captain America. Let Steve live as the hawk and handsaw of Bucky’s head.

Carter was the kind who made Bucky think of detective novels. Of interviewing perps and beating the pavement and drinking too much. Of the two lone auxiliary gumshoes always trying the snatch at a scrap of a pack to belong to. Ending each novel back on the outskirts, but full of a crime well solved.

Back in New York, Bucky'd read them out loud and Steve'd sketch the murky sort of New York all in smudges and one harsh, yellow blot of a street lamp.

Carter’d be the sort of mystery novel dame who’d keep her gun and face powder dry.

“Funny thing for a spy to frown of a bit of light snooping." He said as he bent to pick up the pen. Roll it between his fingers.

He tossed the pen. It landed with a rattle and no leak into a mug on the makeshift desk. She tracked it, lashes dark with spit black.

If she was trying to figure out what kind of fella Sergeant Barnes was, then the problem (as he saw it) was that Bucky kept showing between the stitches. Sergeant Barnes knew she was a military agent who’d been in this much longer than he had. Bucky… Bucky didn't know which way was up, most days.

“Sergeant Barnes I have every faith that you can find another spot for your eavesdropping if you’re just looking for some gossip to chew on.”

Sergeant Barnes would’ve nodded his head and slipped away because he didn’t want to make a fuss. So Bucky pushed his chair back in and found his feet going towards the entrance.

Pity that his mouth was gonna get him killed sooner more than later.

“So you’re more of scent-packet method sort?”

Shut up, Barnes. Stop talking. For the love of God- ”Doesn’t smell like cotton, wool or a metal dispenser, so you didn’t stick to the traditional roots.”

“Perhaps Mr. Stark created something,” Carter said then winced slightly when she mentally caught up to the fact that she admitted she was disguising herself.

“Starks a clever guy, but he isn’t one for the subtle stuff. Wants the big and flashy: flying cars. The future is now.”

She looked at him, then. Bucky started right back as Sergeant Barnes leaned towards the door. “The Egyptians used to use sewn in braids made of sheep’s wool and human hair to modify their scent.”

“Except hair doesn’t breathe the same. It’s why the French stopped doing it and switched over to the swan puff method,” Bucky said because he couldn’t take himself anywhere. “Sewn-in ain’t exactly what a fella might call adaptable.”

“The swan puff method tends to leave a residue on the skin afterward. Do you consider yourself a skilled scent-minder, Sergeant Barnes?”

He took a few deep breaths and settled into himself. It took a moment for her nostrils to catch the safe-scent. Carter always looked like she hadn’t had any haven or harbor since this whole mess started. And, well. Bucky was himself. Gazelles ran from lions, water put fires out, and Bucky ran straight towards any soul in need of henpecking.

He swallowed and ducked his head down again, blinking the ink from the sides of his vision. He needed to not think about that sort of thing in front of a live person. The tent smelled soft and denned down like Hell and high water hadn't already come.

“You offered to dance with me,” she said, her full attention on him.

“Thought you were stepping on my territory,” Bucky said, head tilting all on its own. She knew she was hard to pin down. A new kind of stillness entered the room. A dusty kind of library calm, sunshine warm on your chest like the weight of a cat. The smell of old books and the quiet shuffle of the muck outside. The drizzle and beat of the mud.

“I’ve no untoward designs on Captain Rogers,” Carter held his gaze, hands flattening on the table. “And, as you’ve now noticed, no...inclination towards your space at his side.”

Sergeant Barnes got his feet moving toward the door a stubborn step at a time. Bucky pressed his lips together.

“They call you the Howlers because they think you’re all lost,” Carter said, apropos nothing. Bucky’d heard that too, the muffled rise-drop-hold of a pup left in the cradle by itself. Everyone wanted the end of the war, but nobody knew what to do with a result handed to them with no lead-in.

Not that Steve was an ends justifying the anything sort of person, mind. He absolutely came in with: we need every single Nazi dead and every single captive saved and worked back as far as he needed to. The end found the means.

“I imagine they think they’re clever,” she added, light, a smile tucked into her dimple. All library soft and curled up in an armchair with some sort of vanilla-sweet tomb about. Hell. Something kindly mindless? He liked the thought of Carter, curled up in a warm somewhere, reading for the keen pleasure of it. Mader her a more real thing in his head.  
  
“Imagine they do,” Bucky said feet stuttering forward, dragging himself out for air so he didn’t fold in and hand over secrets.)

* * *

 

**[March 1944]**

  
Since they weren’t tied to any particular operation, just sort tied in or out as needed, the SSR figured London was a good a place as any to hide them away.

Steve didn’t handle his first air raid very well. The whole city went to blackout conditions, hiding down in shelters in the backyards and cellars, or heading down to tube stations to wait out the night attack. Steve looking like if the serum’d given him wings he’d go up there and have some words with the bombers.

Peggy and the family they were hunkered down with stiff-lipped. Even the children playing with little wooden trucks and Peggy looking down at a notebook as if they weren’t pre-buried. They didn’t talk much, the lot of them just curled up together. The sound of dog tags sliding over each other. Falsworth forcing his body into a normal state of rest, occasionally fixing his hat. Bucky cleaned his equipment.

They’d been birthed out again, none worse for the wear, and it’d been a bit of a mix of sights. Had folks gamely doing business as usual next to bombed out buildings and destroyed streets. Heading in for dinner like the worst bit was their cold turnips. None one was hollering about rubble, so there was that at least. Fort all having somebody to rescue would have made Steve feel better, and Bucky could see him thinking it, and then see him curling on himself for thinking it.

It was still dark out, no sirens on and every single light in the whole world shuttered out. A body could see reasonable enough in the dark. Easier to track things that moved over picking your way around carts and broken roof tiles, but it wasn’t like there was a crowd.

Maybe they’d be some G.I.s throwing a party somewhere. A jukebox and the fellas teaching English dames how to jitterbug. Maybe Bucky could shrug off some of this bone-tired energy that kept starting and sparking in his hands.

He was pretty used to the sort of dreams a big fella got. Dreaming he was throwing punches at somebody and they wouldn’t land. His arms all wet and some guy, some bespeckled little round-faced turnip deadend just-

He’d wake up exhausted and jittery and wanting space. Not...around him. Wasn’t fond of any big open fields with no cover. Just space in his own skull. For someone to carve open his head and put his brain in water until it ran clear. Take out all the molding cotton out and put new stuffing in. Like he was Steve’s little-kid teddy bear he’d somehow tucked under his arm and brought to war.

Carter was escorting them back to camp, she and Steve talking about pen ink types of all things. Her, on account of how pen nibs telegraphed through the paper. Steve, on account of what brands leaked the least and had a smooth, steady roll of ink.

“Of course ink blotches are occasionally helpful in some cases-” she noted and Steve was nodding.

‘Where’d all the cats go?” Bucky asked seeing a pile of rubble in their near future. Carter looked up and nimbly stepped around it, eyes tracing over the gap and Bucky wondered if it meant anything to her. If she knew what used to stand there. If it was like DUMBO for Bucky and Steve. If she felt shops like these in her bones somehow. If it felt like a missing tooth or not.

He hadn’t meant to ask about the cats, but apparently, some part of him was just looking around and waiting for a yowl. Come to think of it he hadn’t much seen any dogs either, outside of the ranks.

Carter looked back at him. “Most pet owners moved their animals to the country or were encouraged to have them euthanized before rationing began on advice from NARPAC.”

Bucky didn’t quite stumble over himself, but he did look around with fresh eyes.

“The Duchess of Hamilton, of course, was having none of it and created a sanctuary. And there have been other holdouts, but with the potential of food to run out, there was a concern people would feed their pets over themselves.”

“So Uncle Sam is out there asking little kids to send their dogs to the DFD to become bomb sniffers, and you lot did away with yours,” Bucky said because he could imagine it. These kids suffering through rationing, bombing, and shortcuts without even the privilege of the family dog.

“And Russia’s filled with starving dogs,” Dum Dum said. “You find a pack of hounds in that neck of the woods they’d eat you as soon as look at you is what I hear.”

“Needs must,” Falsworth said, and who knew. Maybe he’d had to take dogs from folks. He’d tell stories now and again, but they were dry. Sucked free of any juice and Bucky could see him ticking away in there. Falsworth would stare right back and maybe tell a joke. Add some life back in.

Bucky didn’t know how much of that was Monty and how much of that was a fella who knew how to read his CO’s Primary because he had to.

Carter looked over the houses and people, straightening up. “My main concern, for now, is to make sure there are people, homes and a country left standing so there can be British pets.”

“Not trying to make a fuss,” Bucky said, head ducked down. “Just used to more yowling this time of night.”

Steve grabbed that opportunity to talk about the barbershop quarter wanna-be alley cats practiced every night outside their first boarding room. How Bucky used to sit next to the window and conduct.

“How many dogs you suppose that was?” Dum Dum asked, take a cigar from who knew where and tucking it between his teeth.

“Probably not as many as 3rd and 4th kids,” Bucky said, which wasn’t exactly fair but now he was off balance. “Think the Howlers should get ourselves a bomb-sniffing dog?”

“What, so it can sit on Dernier and howl?”  
  
Bucky'd looked back to check on him, and got a sight of the whole team flagging. They were walking, sure. Chins up and keeping pace like proper folk, but there was a strawman look about them.

Steve’d taken like a duck to water with this whole body transformation and fighting a war thing. Got all in knots when it came to beta minding. Steve’d grab fella by the shoulder and tuck him under his wing with a lot of helpless looks toward Bucky, eventually getting the guy a smoke and starting them in on an argument.

(Bucky had a theory that Steve, all full of well-meaning, thought that best cure for a bad day was getting the blood up about something bigger. Feel lousy? Have an argument about labor unions.

Bucky’d liked marbles, roast beef sandwiches with horseradish, and pulp novels. Steve’d liked folks coming together and yelling at powerful people to shape up or ship out.)

Dernier was walking with Jones and smoking, looking around London like he was waiting for the real city to show up. Jones was fussing over his hands. He’d fuss at Dernier's face too, but they were in the middle of a street. Dernier wouldn’t wear the hand protective cream more times than not, so his hands looked about twenty years older than he did.

Bucky’d read enough ads to know back home they got themselves tinted facial protective creams. Mated folks demanded perfection without thinking too close on what the ingredients were. S’why all that skin cream in the 20's had arsenic in it and Venetian Ceruse’d had white lead in it.

(Ads were a comforting sort of thing. Weren’t trying to tell you anything too big. Weren’t trying to kill you. They wanted some folk to wing it down to their corner store and pick up some Burma-Shave.)

Bucky fell back and stepped to the other side of Dernier. Grabbed his left hand, for all Dernier tried to tuck it back in his pocket. “Ahh, leave it.”

Bucky got Dernier’s hand pinned down under his elbow and plucked the liberated Institut Karit out of Jones' pocket. Started to massage it into the ruin of Dernier hands for a leave-on-march. Dernier fussed about it a bit more, but it was just flavor and no heat. Jones bumped his shoulder and the two of them started smoothing out Jones’ French some more.

They had some ongoing discussion about some French book that looked slim, but Bucky guessed was pretty dense given how long they’d been gnawing at it. He’d tried to read it once or twice out of… some sort of aww shuck solidarity and boredom realized he didn't have a tenth of vocabulary to even start hacking at it.

Jones, apparently, was thinking of translating it into English for some kinda big university project and Dernier usually laughed at him, something, something, piano noir de nuit.

Dernier and Jones preferred each other’s scent minding, and Bucky didn’t take it personally. Dernier was part of a pack where only one fella could understand him much. Jones was part of a pack that could hear him good and clear but didn’t always know what he was saying, except Morita now and again. Different story, same author for those two.

Maybe that’d make history books. Bucky hoped it did. Hoped the other side of this stupid mess had people blinking at one another and maybe not putting up so many borders and signs about what sort of folk could be where. You’d think, fighting folks like the Nazis, the correct response would be to fling open more doors. But instead, Morita’s family wasn’t in a camp by the grace of good luck trying to bring the hammer down on any folks that far out West. That entire neck of the woods was a cookie cutter nation where America sort of filled in between the gaps. They'd just as soon head out to an Original Nation pack as stay around waiting to get rounded up.

They walked through London in the dark and the mostly quiet. Some radios clicked on, now that the all-clear had sounded. Lights began to warm up the street in patches and flashes of the ground. News reports fell out of windows and he heard the sharp whistle of a kettle from down the block.

Folks outside rubbernecked at them a bit. Which, to be fair, Steve was wearing a full on flag costume and the rest of them were all huddled in bunches like grapes near gone sour, so Bucky probably would have stared at them as well.

Dernier’s breath stuttered as Bucky got the skin warmed back up. It was thickened and rough under his hands, grooves of grease dug deep in the lines. Took some work to breathe some life back into it. Get at it like the Tin Man and some oil, or Dernier would rust all up in the woods.

Muscle didn’t like giving in, in Bucky’s experience. He’d had to dig a knuckle into his own jaw more than a few times a day to get some space in there. And skin, hell. You read the advertisements and skin needed as much pampering as any medal winning dog. Especially if a fella was in the explosives and industrial soap business.

“We’ve got to get you a better protective cream. You not wearing yours? Or uh, Crème industrielle? Portez? Portez-tu...uh...gant?” Bucky stumbled and then shook Dernier’s hand. Dernier blinked at him. His wrist popped as Bucky rotated it around and got at the knuckles.

“That was almost an entire sentence. Dernier might have to suffer through your den mothering yet,” Jones said. “Want to tell him to scrub under his nails and behind his ears.”

“You’d better be translating my goddamn den mothering,” Bucky said, “look at his posture. You think we let slouchers into the Howlers?” Bucky pushed a hand between Dernier’s shoulders, and his spine popped as he stood up. “You stand...uh...tens-tou driot. Yeah, put some iron into it.”

“Nah,” Jones said, working on Dernier’s other hand, running steady pressure from his elbow to wrist. Dernier said something in a Parisian blur and Jones clucked his tongue. “Encour une fois,” which they might as well get printed on signs.

Dernier repeated his comment, with some consonants thrown in. No pauses between words, but a fella could dream big.

“Nous aimons...ah…” Jones snapped his fingers, “Comment on dit-”

Then it was the three of them toddling down the road, still smelling of industrial smoke. Bucky’d need to read the ingredients on the protective cream they had. Pick Stark's brain for a spell, if Bucky could ever wrangle him for a second. Seemed silly to drag him off for that, but hey. He’d had time to figure out paint for Steve’s shield.

Dernier usually smelled like grease and explosive residue at any given moment. Granted, London mostly smelled like smoke, so it was hard to pick and choose. The fella’d been grease-monkeying since before the war and that sort of thing sank in deep.

The French Resistance had wanted him back, apparently. There was something universal about wanted to blow up some Nazi whelps of bitches the world over, though. They mourned over the loss of skill back home, but sure liked the results.

They hit where they were billeted. “It was a townhome. The owners have moved to the country and graciously allowed us the use of it for the remainder of the war,” Carter said, automatically brushing her feet off at the welcome mat.

“One bathroom upstairs and rooms enough for everyone to double up with the exception of Captain Rogers. There’s an Anderson shelter in the garden which the British public has been advised to sleep in. I do need to speak with you a moment in the study. Rationing is on, so the gas ring in the kitchen is all we can provide, and if you are to take a bath please be mindful of the water line in the tub.” Peggy sized them up and then gestured to the kitchen.

“There’s a vegetable plot in the back if you have a mind for something to do with your hands. Captain Rogers I will need to speak with you in the study.”

The lot of them looked at each other and raise fists to ro-sham-bo for the first bath. Morita won it, with Dum Dum as second, and nobody else wanted to share the same bath water as them. They got started on the water boiling and hunting for bath soda in the pantry.

Bucky went to go look at the garden, for all he didn’t know a weed from an actual plant, though there was anything growing yet. The rest went to check out the rooms, except Monty, who headed out.

There was a laundry line stretched across the small yard, which was still bigger than any plot of land Bucky’d ever had. He’d know folks growing food in their windows and on rooftops, sure. But not your own land.

Jones came out after a moment, the two of them looking at the neat little Anderson shelter with the garden on top. Some growth poking up through the soil. There was a bench as well, which Bucky’d taken and smoked his ration.

“They got Cap in the Master suite with the real bed. We gave you and Jim the nursery since that’s got the best lines of sight to two sides of the house,” Jones said as they heard water running upstairs, “Jacques and I got the kid’s room because it’s next to the stairs and that’s the main way up other than scaling the garden trellis.”

“Of course there’s a garden trellis,” Bucky muttered, looking at it.

“Dugan and Monty got the linen closet, though I think Monty’s going to grab the sofa in the study to keep an ear out for the back door.” Jones finished and Bucky nodded. “Linen closet opposite the stairs?”

“You turn right up there and you hit the Master Suite, go left and you run into me and Dernier. Monty stays down here and nobody’s coming in through the ground floor without us knowing about it.

Bucky nodded. “They gonna get us some damn food?”

“Monty’s on it. Want to rig the doors?”

“Bells on a mousetrap should do it,” Bucky said. “Doors and windows and get the attic with a grease bomb. More likely they’d just blow the house up, but the squids don’t seem to know if they’re coming or going on trying to get Steve in as a specimen.”

Jones nodded and looked at the shelter. “Think we should spend the night in there.”

Bucky smoked for a minute and in his gut, he felt a sort of...stillness around them.

“It’ll be a quiet night,” He said and looked up at the sky. “From bombs, anyways.”

Jones nodded and went back inside.

The thing about Captain America. About Steve, really, since Captain America was for the comics, and Steve was for life. Was that his natural inclination was to take an argument directly to somebody. If you wanted to have an argument with a fella? Well, you’d say that right in front of God and country. You’d go right at them head on, even if you were gonna lose. If the two of them had been born in Germany, they’d both be well dead from saying the wrong thing to the right bloke, like plenty of brave, dumb souls already had.

Steve liked lines. He thought in lines. He looked at folks and thought they saw the world the same way he did, not… Look, that sounded mean, but Steve looked at the whole big, stupid, complicated world and in the same way, Bucky could feel when he should let loose a bullet, Steve planted his feet and said: hey. This is how it’s supposed to be. Every single goddamn action had to be valued on its own merits. Discretion was the better part of goddamn shit.

Bucky loved Steve, but Steve was a fella made for direct action. Bucky’d known Steve so long he could slip in and out of his head like an old robe. But he’d look at the Howlers and they were just now picking up on the whole...this wasn’t because of a bit. Steve honestly wouldn’t throw a bomb into a civilian crowd to hit a Hitler, but he absolutely would have gone up to him 3 years ago and punched him directly across the jaw.

Steve had to keep being reminded that most folks would smile and hold the door for you on Sunday and cut your pay in half on Monday. So, if a fella was Hell bent on keeping a person like Steve alive through a war with folks like Hydra sulking in shadows and pulling magic out of thin air to win a fight - even when they already had more advantages than any rational explanation would give you- you had to start thinking outside the lines.

Morita took the boiled water up to the tub, and Bucky head indoors. Followed Morita up the stairs and splashed water into a washbasin. Soaped up his face and washed behind his ears. Scrubbed at his hair and then looked at himself in the sliver of a mirror while Morita shucked off his clothes and climbed into the tub, knees bent up. He reached into his bag for a smoke, but his hands were wet and the water wouldn’t stay hot for long.

Bucky reached down and got a smoke out, tucked it into his mouth and lit it, gave it to Morita who inhaled so sharp it was like his first breath of the day.

Bucky turned back and washed behind his ears, then soaped up his face for a shave.

It was probably the place the man of the house had shaved every morning, staring right into the mirror. A man who’d had this whole big life with small, normal thought, until Germany invaded Poland and the whole world got its hackles up one way or another. Bucky’d gone down that road by way of Steve, so the fact that folks had protested in the streets to make peace with Hitler had come with a moment of vertigo.

“You’re taking to war, huh,” Morita said from the tub, lounging back and letting the water soak into him a bit. Bucky leaned into the mirror and started getting at the stubble. There wasn’t enough steam to touch the mirror yet so he had a clean line of sight on getting his face clean and Morita’s calloused knees sticking out of the tub.

Bucky glanced at him in the mirror. He had the kind of clean face that’d Bucky had back home. “How often you shave these days?”

“About once a week. Morita ashed into the tray next to the tub. “You up to every day now?”

Bucky sighed and pushed his hair out of his face. “Just about. Twice a day sometimes.”

Morita inhaled a hot lungful of smoke and stared up at the water-stained ceiling. Bucky pressed a hot towel against his skin and breathed for a second. Back home he had a small bottle of aftershave he could have pressed into his skin. Here he had red bumps along his jawline and clogged pores around his nose and his skin was itchy and irritated but hey. What did that matter?

He wasn’t ever gonna be the sort of fella now that wore a slick suit and worked for a club and took dames out for a spin on the floor to show off. The world needed muscle and steady hands, so that’s what he had. The hell with it. He was useful. He had a skill position. He had a rank. He had folks looking to him, who’d kiss him right at his mouth if they were that kind of unit.

He pulled the cooled towel away. “Don’t soak your nails too long, they'll crack."

Morita hummed and watched him go. If he had any thoughts he kept them to himself.

He got in fresh clothes and got back downstairs to sit in one of the big armchairs facing the fireplace. There was space on the ground for kids to lie on their bellies and listen to their serials, a loveseat for the head of Household to do their knitting while the main pair read up on the news and a small table with a rack of coasters for a nightly cup of tea while listening to the news.

Outside the night crept by. Too quiet by half and dark as the grave. Folks tucking into their Anderson shelters for the night, with curtains pulled tight and nothing singing down the energy lines.

Bucky pulled their curtains and glanced up when Carter opened up the sliding doors of the study. Steve was still inside, maybe caught up in his own head. Maybe already asleep. She took in the bells and Bucky’s fingers on the curtains.

“We do have this house on watch,” She noted.

“If my math’s right, a full pound of prevention is worth 16 pounds of cure. And since we’re already in for a penny, might as well.”

She nodded because Carter had her own way of thinking about things. “Try and get some rest, Sergeant Barnes.”

“The same to you, Agent.”

* * *

 

 **[Who Knows Where]**  
“Do you see how it reacts, sometimes?”

“What is distracting you now? Another pointless tank?”

“The Tesseract. I have been studying it closely, and in these last few months have noticed something very curious. The power output is steady, almost impossible to calculate, but every so often it… changes.”

“It is the weapon of a God, Doctor Zola. It has enough power to change the world, do you think you’re little experiments are even touching what it is capable of?”

“No. No Herr Schmidt but. Something is happening to it. Something that we are not doing.”

“Mmm. Well, I am sure a man such as yourself will get to the bottom of it sooner or later. For now, we must focus on eliminating this...pest with a shield.”

“Of course! Of course. I have just the thing. Something to make one man fight like an army.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Putting the Intermission at Chapter 2 was way the heck too soon with how long it is taking for me to gently shepherd Bucky to the point of this story, such as it is.


	4. Chapter 4

**[April 1944]**

When it came to blue pictures, Bucky wasn't what he'd call a connoisseur. He wasn’t some kinda prude or anything. He knew the mainstays: Rita Hayworth’s Time photo, with Hayworth's hair down in curls and dressed in soft fabrics, strewn on a satin bed. Everybody knew that one. Made a fella think of a soft place to sleep, the whisper of fabric and crisp slide of hair brushing.

 

Bucky’d shelled out for that issue like half the schmucks in the neighborhood. Steve’d found it a week or two later, because there weren't too many places to hide a thing like that and Steve'd always had a nose for paper. He'd proceeded to use it as a shadow and light study. Whether it was outta actual ignorance or because he was being a little shit, Bucky didn’t know.

 

Bucky hadn't shelled out for Grable’s but he could picture it well enough. Look in the bag of any Tom, Dick or Sue and you were just as likely to see Grable's crown of bounding curls swept up off her neck. Wearing the vanilla-white swimsuit, smiling over her shoulder like tomorrow'd be dandy.

 

Springtime in the Rockies was always a packed show when the USO spun it. Fellas all leaned on each other, wished themselves in the Rosita or McTavish role. Didn't matter that she was a beta like the rest of them: in the pictures, everything was the way Hollywood said it was.

 

Bucky’d seen plenty, but he hadn’t studied them. Even when they'd been first drafted. All comfort items scrapped and settled an arm's length away from any other human body. Bucky’d had too many eyes on him and not many folks trying to offer him something to sink his teeth into. The rest of them had all stumbled into any scrap of shelter that looked a little out of the rain.

 

He hadn’t been much better. All hollow-brained and stroking the bark of a tree for any kind of real. But Steve’d marked him as special. So he had to be special.

 

Gable and Hayworth Bucky knew off the dome. The Vargas Pairs series he was familiar with, but as sort of a general thing. The painter had a good eye for getting that flushed, rosy-cheeked healthy looking pair, all wrapped in soft fabrics. Looking well fed, maybe half-asleep. Clean sheets and warm-toned turned down covers. Hairbrushes on the vanity.

 

Except if one of them morality clause thumping brass caught you with "bedroom pairs" you were up shit creek. They’d get real uppity about how it'd “slow the minds and reactions of the men with an indolent lethargy.”

 

Seemed to Bucky they wanted blood in every fella's nose and on his teeth until they blew a whistle. Then wanted to rinse him off at some canteen with a slice of pie and glass of milk.

 

With some brass, if they could find a way to pick them apart, clean 'em and put them back in a holster, they'd skip the milk.

 

Anyways. This might've been Bucky’s opinion, but staring at Red Skull always got his eyes sore and sent his brain out looking for a nice memory.

 

What better enemy of the lush American ideal than a literal red skull?It’d've been a better color story if he’d been green, but here they were.

 

“Ah yes, please do enter, Captain.” Schmidt was saying, and Bucky smelled copper. as they threw themselves into the room. “Learn if you are worthy of standing by my side.”

 

“But then people might think we know each other,” Steve said, tossing himself at and then...through? Schmidt.

 

The Howlers stood at the entrance of the room. They looked at one another. At Steve, beaten halfway to Hell being full-Steve-ahead about it. Finally at the fuzzy image of Schmidt disjointed after the interruption in a signal.

 

Finally, as usual, all eyes were on Sergeant Barnes. And while he has some iron in his spine Bucky was blood in his nose and there was nobody to bite.

 

“Wait, if he’s made of sound waves, why not put the shield on him again?” Jones said, after Schmidt started explaining how he was there, but not. Jones had a better handle on that side of things. Bucky didn’t know how sound waves made up an image, but he knew he couldn’t shoot it.

 

Dernier said something and pointed to the sparking equipment. They turned-up nose at the heavy stone in the middle of the room drenching them in storm-scent.

 

“I will destroy it.” Schmidt mused, eyes on Steve, “and you along with it. Unless…”

 

He looked over at the Howlers and Steve stood still. Bucky tried to focus on him. At Steve in the room, and the fuzz and spurt of Schmidt buzzing in the room, but his eyes kept sliding back to the stone in the room. He lilting a bit, trying to catch himself and He felt Dum Dum's shoulder against his.

 

“You must embrace your superiority. Leave your inferiors to their doom. Or perish with them, with your weak American ideals of camaraderie.”

 

“Dugan-" Steve was shouting. Talking? The buzz rattling him from the inside out. How could anyone even- "-out,” Steve commanded shield up and jaw firmed. Bucky swung his Tompson up, trying to find the threat, but it the buzz, spurt, and clammer had him by the bones.

 

If God were a thing then Steve and he could meet together, both demanding to be flung back down for the next bell. Weren’t any way God made a soul like Steve’s that was for one round. God made Steve to last. Mended as required. Bucky was supposed to be in there with him. But his feet fumbled under him. Did he feel... drunk? Or-

 

“Steve-” Bucky...existed. He was a sentence: verb as needed.

 

Dum Dum argued something, the image of him swimming and fading in, then out again. Bucky felt the abrupt grip of at least three hands, one tight to his neck and-

 

Steve chucked his shield at the cables, one snapping loose. The only real thing left in the world.

 

The whole room smelled like static, the feel of it pressing hard to the skin and it took him a harsh moment of nausea to realize they were leaving. Moving. The Howlers were running out.

 

Dum Dum and Jones were talking. Bucky’s eyes glued to the...well according to Jones, the runestone and it was a splatter of blue against the world. The start to a whole lot of radiating projections.

 

Falsworth had Bucky by the collar. He would have dragged any fella straight out of the grave if needed. An heir, a spare, two to pair, one for prayer, and the rest for a scare, should the good Lord bless you.

 

Steve had parachuted to this castle by himself.  Taken out some kinda… souped up suit of armor that was sparkling blue and fresh out of blood.

 

The tank that followed, because of course they had had to dump more nonsense after bad, had been a tag team between him and Stark. They’d heard it over the line, with Stark telling Steve how to take out the control box. Bucky'd started to feel the tilt of a world shifting under his fee then, but. Well. He was used to the hard vertigo of Steve's new career choice.

 

They’d gotten here in the nick of time to stand around like it was all they were good for.

 

Schmidt was always yelling about genetics and serums. It was a one-stop trolley every time he and Steve had a face-down. But cards down, what was his weapon of choice? Not his enhanced genetics, no. A bomb. So that wasn’t new. Weren’t anybody else like Steve, but Schmidt sure kept shooting for the stars on that one.

 

“Hey, hey let me-” Bucky said, all the Sergeant Barnes folded up under the pressure. “Let me go, that’s-”

 

“Sorry pal, Cap’s orders,” Jones said backed by the sound of their boots hitting the dirt. Bucky struggled to look back around. Struggled to look anywhere.

 

The world was technicolor and bled out into blue lines, clean and simple. Except for how words took too much brain space and so Bucky was a fella who saw the lines and had no kind of words. All the cause building and building and-

 

He wasn’t a body, he was the straight line between the oncoming explosion, and them. Saw the shrapnel hit Jones in the shoulder, get Falworth in the head, pierce Bucky’d arm straight through and-

 

He could feel the runestone in his guts. Hear it ring through his skull and echo out. Steve’d cut a cable, but there was too much space. The thing was so bright, but nobody else was looking. The world listed to the right and then shot into the nothing for a moment. An endless kinda moment. There was electricity in the air, an explosion right on the cusp. They were running away and he couldn’t reach,  the world darkened down to a navy.

 

He reached out to Steve. Steve there, in the blue, not seeing a stacked deck put right in front of him. Bucky grabbed the spark as they kept moving. The lines shifted in bursts and sparks, hitting new places as they crumpled. A train leaving New York. A train leaving Boston. A train leaving Fresno at 55 miles per hour-

 

Breathed.

 

Breathed.

 

Bucky was half there, the rest back in their apartment in Brooklyn. With Steve scowling at himself in a mirror, drawing himself. Bucky could see the individual dust motes hanging in his memory. Able to walk around like a wax museum exhibit.

 

He saw Steve. Steve as he’d always been and looking at himself. Turning that mirror into flat lines. Bucky reached for him and then the coin flipped and he was back. Hands out, pushing force away, with Steve in the middle.

 

Bucky's hands snapped back, but he pushed, held, fingers clawed. The cold shot through, jabbing up his arms. He shoved the blue down, crunched it underneath his fingers. No. The lines...bent. Twisted underneath his hands and he was the fires of Heaven’s angels and he was the point of bent angles and no. No.

 

Bucky’s vision washed out. The field filled with ghosts, his arms and body seized into a tight racket of pain, and he didn’t know a damn thing.

 

(The reports will say Steve got out just in the nick of time, and no one will think too much about how the explosion went back and away like it was aimed there. Wasn't like they'd had air support. Wasn't like they knew how runestones worked.)

 

He didn’t know if it were the Sandman or Death that grabbed him by the scruff and dragged him down. The world got… smoky at the edges. Went unblended from itself and sprang apart and Bucky bled right out of every shade of it. Oil, water and whatever Bucky was these days.

 

Don’t think about it.

 

Him a sharp line: the only pencil outline in a chalk haze world. He hadn’t felt like a real, living boy since… At least not since detaching f off Zola table, sure, but that was the easy answer. Before that? Since he learned how to crawl up a tree and not out of his skin? Since his papers? Since he'd locked himself in a room with Steve? Since he’d been born?

 

He was drilling deeper, but the well’d run dry.

 

Don’t think about it.

 

He tried to blink and couldn’t. Tried to touch his face couldn’t reach his arms. Couldn’t feel his hands. He couldn’t feel his hands. He tried to stand, but the perspective didn’t change. A movie reel beaming out of his own empty skull had him glued to his seat.

 

He was dead. This was. He'd gotten shot and hadn’t noticed. The bomb had gone off and incinerated him. Hell was cold and smelled like nothing. Even dreams had smells.

 

His eyes stuck open, and looked like… everything all split apart. The painting back to splotches of color on a pallet. The slide snapped to the next reel changed but his eyes didn’t move. He couldn’t blink. It was like those poor suckers out in the field, staring out at the birds circling for dinner. Tears welling up and dripping down because they couldn’t bleed out. You’d go blind from that, laying out there, crying and the hearing the crows. Feeling them peck into your mouth and get the tongue. Sharp beaks stabbing the eyes out of your head-

 

St. Peter wasn't there. If he was dead then he'd be dead. The Howlers wouldn’t let him stick around. They wouldn’t make him lay there in the cold. Let him lie there for something else to find him.

 

They’d plug out his brain. Steve would make sure he didn’t get buried all by himself, in the cold. Steve would find him somewhere warm and quiet.

 

But here he was: alone. A cold body in the middle of nothing. Steve wouldn’t… if they’d died together the Howlers would have taken them home, sure. But they'd get tucked under the same gravestone. Or, if they couldn't get them out, burn them together. Let them go out warm. They can't have all died, an arm's length apart. They can't have-

 

He couldn’t breathe. The was no smells. How were you breathing if there was no scent. He couldn’t breathe he-

 

First, they were ghosts. Smudges like a thumbprint that Steve would worry his kneaded eraser over. Gunpowder residue smudges all over Dernier and cigar ash on Dum Dum’s shoes.

 

Bucky wavered in vertigo for a moment before the smudges crashed into focus. He kept stumbling along to the tune of hands he couldn’t see. Stumbling along a ruin of plans he didn’t mean, along with the decline to the short, sharp pause before somebody said something inadvisable. The snap before the first rifle report.

 

A breath, a breadth.

 

Soldiers hung in neat rows as composed and stiff as a dirge. One terrified face for every smudge, and Bucky? He’d seen all kinds of drawings. Sometimes Steve got pulled in for inking work. Sometimes Steve’s hand put permanent bad lines and terrible copy.

 

The bodies weren’t limp, not like a butcher window. They had arms up over their heads, legs in mid-run, mouths gaping, and eyes wild. Terrified and young, in stillness, the way he couldn’t much think of them in motion. Prime meat on the job market left for the dogs.

 

Bucky stared at them because his eyes weren’t good for anything else. They didn’t look like drowned sailors in the ocean. Their hair was stiff, their bodies were stiff. Wax statues of a thing shaded blue and trapped in a second.

 

He felt stillness, syrupy over his skin, dripping down and it doesn’t… no. It doesn’t touch him. He could still feel it pressing towards him. Pompeii coming to trap him for museums to find-

 

He thinks of shoes in a department store. All lined up neat and shined, ready to be worn to destruction. His feet got slower, stumbled under him, air thicker in his throat and- his shoes must pass **Captain's inspection** do your shoes pass **Civilian Inspection**?

 

The blue comes close, hovers at the edge of his skin without sinking in. Leaves him the only bleeding thing for as far as his eyes could see. There was no horizon here. If he shot a bullet it would gum up in the blue. The sky, gone, and a prayer so trapped down deep he was sure it had suffocated by now-up-up-up no end to the blueness

 

There were the rows of soldiers, neat and clean and terrified. Every side of this war all in rank and running, or cringing, or flung towards nowhere. Young, wild-eyed half-growns trapped in stained glass and there was no air. No breeze. And as he thought about it, space collapsed into paper. Everything reducing to stationary points and infinite lines. Bucky, the only Cube in Flatland.

 

The sort of stillness of a bombed out church. The kind of stillness that makes kids write their names on their arms so mum could find them after the bombs came.  A wet, airless choke of a color.

 

His fingers slipped along the nothing, the cold baking into his fingers. Rattling up his hands, his wrists, curling up his arms. Up and up until black washed over his eyes from bottom to top and saved him.

* * *

 

**[Who Knows Where]**

 

Dear Pricilla,

 

Got safely in B-- last night and they delivered your last few letters. We hit camp at around midnight and I had no more energy than to eat what was put in front of me, take off my blouse and boots and hit the sack, but I did read your letters the moment I was given some time and they are a nice piece of home. I have put the rest in a waterproof packet in my bag to read when we are marching.  
  
It was a long march with full pack, but we saw no action and if this is all I do the rest of the war then I’ll be primed to be some sort of courier or delivery fella, no doubt.  Not that it’s all bad. Now that we’re here it is warm! There’s sun shining, and the food is alright. I have been eating well as I can, and you can tell the new littles all the boys sure appreciate them eating all those beets and carrots so we have food over here.

 

I am sorry to report to mom and pop that I have not made rank yet, on account of there being no action within to distinguish myself.  My Officers like me well enough, though they are very busy and you know how I don’t like to make a fuss. I being well useful, where I can be. I did tell them about the reading and writing honors I got, but there are plenty of folks doing desk jobs and not enough people carrying packs. I didn’t want to come off as not having the blood for war, so I didn’t bring it up again. You can tell ma and pa I am working on putting on a good showing.

 

You don’t need to worry about your boy getting a sour belly about this business, but it is hard business. Not just the food and the walking (though I tell everyone who will listen about your shortbread. The boys out here all of their own Heads of House who got their own tricks. Never talked about food so much in my life!) but the waiting. They show you how to use a gun and a bayonet some, and we also learned a bit of swimming in case we need to make a beach landing. But they have not yet sent us to the front. When they do send me, I will put on a good showing and do what needs to be done for mom and pop.

 

Thank you for the book and the prayers.

 

Yours,

Cecil

* * *

 

**[April 1944]**

 

The world swam up back to meet him in a fog and a shudder.  Trying to look through the bottom of a Coke bottle, or squinting through somebody's glasses.

 

He blinked a few times and the camera came into focus. He felt the rise and dip of his stomach, a lurching not-nausea. He expected it to be an infirmary somewhere. With him flat on his back, banged up and bandaged. Maybe alone. Maybe with Steve staring down at him. He could smell Steve if he thought about it, but the room didn't have the cotton-detergent-blood stink of a medic tent.

 

Metal he caught first. He scented each of the Howlers, eventually. Less an individual scent, mostly, and more the base-heart-top notes that came with the lot of them together. Nothing he wouldn't have been able to put in order in Brooklyn. A growling part of his mind grumbling contentment when it got the full hit of all his pack in one place.

 

Here he was, sitting up normal, the world moving around them. Sergeant Barnes was blinking his eyes. Holding his arm still for...something. Breathing in and out while Bucky'd gone… away. Somewhere else. Who knew where.

 

Jones was talking to him, Bucky realized after another stretch of nothing. The world was bobbing up and down, and Jones was talking in the way where he didn’t much think Bucky was listening.

 

Bucky looked at him, and then followed his gaze down to his hands, held steady while Jones stitched up a deep cut right across the meat of his palm. There were other, smaller lacerations. On the fingers and across the back. Some were stitched up already. Some were just taped. It looked. It looked like he’d punched glass, maybe. Like his skin had just split apart on his own,

 

He watched Jones draw the needle through his skin. Heard the scratch of thread through the skin. And if he’d seen the same happening to any of the other Howlers he'd wince in sympathy. When it was his own hand he watched.

 

Bucky’s brain clicked along at a quarter speed. Staring at his own damn hands. If Schmidt showed up in his wrong-fitting flesh Bucky'd probably just stare at him for a beat while everyone else got in their licks.

 

Bucky half-pulled away, but Jones clucked his tongue. “Leave it, I said. You can’t do it yourself.”

 

“Still don’t know how he did it in the first place,” Dum Dum replied and Bucky realized he was on the other side.

 

Their scents were tired-worn but only the residue of blood. His own scent seemed mellow enough. Strung through with half-stale fear, maybe, but that wasn’t new. Almost got him down another rabbit hole, but Jones kept talking.

 

“No debris either. But now we have evil villains made out of soundwaves and tanks made out of who knows what, so this is probably normal. At least I can do something about this,” Jones said, “Who knows. Maybe magic runestone injuries seal up on their own.”

 

“Can’t stop until we hit the border,” Bucky muttered, looking at the red wounds and the black stitches. It didn’t hurt. His hands felt colder than anything else. Middle of winter cold. Trying to read with no gloves cold. A bone-deep sort of numb that felt like it should ache, the way cold ached, but never quite soaked in.

 

Jones's scent turned a touch worried. Still not panicked, but like he'd just as soon be chewing on the side of his thumb and thinking the lot of them over. Bucky looked at him and Jones looked back, steady. “There's also the long way down to consider."

 

He looked around and sure enough, they were airborne.

 

Bucky thought of the corpse field all in blues. Bodies hanging frozen in place, stuck firm, like how films looked these days. A bunch of cells flicking quick over the screen. The soldiers had looked like a piece of celluloid on the ground, faded into blue. Lifelike in the way corpses weren’t. Stuck in the way people weren't.

 

His mind didn’t edge outside of his skull, though. Didn’t grab that thought and go into freefall. He stayed, listening to Jones talk and Dum Dum responding. Watching Jones tying off neat stitches because they gave him too much practice.

 

After a while, the rest of the world filled in around Jones and Dum Dum. Came into focus like the films and he took a breath.

 

He scanned around for Steve, found him slumped over. Curled up under his shield and asleep. Tired around the edges. Bucky turned his nose up and figured Steve’s blood was up, a little. Or it had been and the airplane kept the memory. Nothing worth getting worked up over right now,

 

Falsworth was stationed up front, but following Steve’s lead,  neatly put away and asleep. Morita with his hat down and Dernier slightly snoring.

 

So it was them merry three, tucked away and Bucky about as useful as any other body.

 

Howlers were a paranoid bunch. They all wouldn’t have gone to sleep if Bucky’d been...wrong. They’d be awake. Careful. Hovering, probably.

 

So he went back to the stubborn lump of fear in his own stomach.  He’d thought about going back home to Steve with just the one arm. He’d figured he could make it work with one arm or a leg. People had done it before him. But if he got chucked home now for shell shock, then he’d be what? Not a Primary, that was for sure. Nothing useful. Nothing Captain America would want to keep, other than for maybe nostalgia sake.

 

He had...he couldn’t feel the hurt, but his fingers twitched when he told them to and- He had to. Had to keep his mouth shut. If they thought he’d lost his marbles they’d send him off somewhere for sure, and he couldn't. They’d send him to a doctor and then on a ship and he’d thump around New York hearing about Cap and eventually nobody would even know he was supposed to be out there with him. They wouldn’t think a thing about him at all except: _look at that dead-end in the breadline. Shellshock, you know. Battle fatigue. Couldn’t keep his blood up._

 

Jones finished up and Bucky twitched his fingers again. The hand moved. The body obeyed. The cold was probably just adrenaline. The whole. The whole thing had just been adrenaline.

 

“You alright, Buck?” Steve asked from behind.

 

“Do a lot better if we weren’t out here punching tanks like that’s what God took six days to get around to,” Bucky said from out of some echo chamber in his own skull. Pull a cord and get a recording. Jones clapped him on the shoulder and shoved him more at Dum Dum, and they sat. Jones read. Dum Dum fell asleep as soon as there wasn’t anybody to talk to. Bucky stared out at nothing.

* * *

 

**[May 1944]**

Brass would probably be a lot happier if the Howling Commandos were the kind of tool you could take out, use, and pack somewhere out of the way when you were done.

 

As was, whenever they wanted to split up the set, they had Steve to deal with. Steve didn’t have... oh gosh what was the term? Right: respect for authority. Not unless the authority in question had planted her heels, squared her shoulders and fired right at an oncoming car.

 

But Carter wasn’t around, so they had two stuffed shirts trying to tell Captain America his business, which hadn't gone well before he put on 100 lbs of muscle and some extra for the cab ride home.

 

“Your unit has multiple excellent marksmen, it seems you can function on one infiltration mission without Barnes, right Captain Rogers?” One of the two brass said, staring him down. The other was looking at files. "Sergeant Barnes provides cover fire, but has not been utilized for his sharpshooting abilities according to any of your reports."

 

“The Howlers are my regiment,” Steve’d said, staring down, feet braced and stinking mad. The sort of thing that, maybe in a rougher time, they would have come to teeth over. “They work best as a whole.”

 

“This war is all about sacrifices,” The pressed suit had taken a step back, but he had the privilege of rank and so there they were. “Sergeant Barnes will report to transport at o’5 hundred hours and the rest of your troop can report to transport at o’7 hundred.”

 

“Understood,” Bucky’d said and grabbed Steve by the elbow. Steve stood firm for a second and Bucky glanced at the tent, at Steve. Steve was angling to go back in, so Bucky pressed a kiss to the side of his mouth. Steve jerked his attention to Bucky and let himself be dragged off.

 

“Why are you-” Steve had his back up about it. Ready to roll back into that tent like a storm and a Bucky sighed. “You’re part of my-

Your hands are-”

 

“Are fine,” Bucky held them up, and yeah some of the deeper lacerations pulled a bit, but he could handle himself just fine. A little discomfort wasn’t much to fuss over.

 

(They'd landed right outside the camp last month, and he'd been marched straight to medical. The medic’d looked him over. Said the work was good, prescribed a day of rest and some bonding time.

 

They’d shoved him at Steve, and Steve’d sort of stared at him like he was one of the British kids who asked for some gum, chum. Confused and well-meaning, but desperately out of his element.

 

“No need to anything special,” The medic said like maybe there was a good reason for Steve looking like he’d never seen Bucky in his life. “Whatever you normally do will suffice. Injuries to the main function of a man’s job can add undue stress, which can contribute to battle fatigue.”

 

That sounded like it was out of a pamphlet and Bucky had to walk them out before Steve went and found the aforementioned pamphlet and read it for some clues. Bucky'd read plenty of pamphlets. Not been helped by a rotten one of them.

 

"Jesus. Alright. Come on, let’s get you some paper,” Bucky said and Steve’s shoulders rolled down. They got him some paper out of an empty lab and headed back to Steve's officer tent. Bucky'd started for the Primary trundle bed, and Steve'd pushed him into the main bunk.

 

"Get comfortable,"

 

"It's like I've never done this before," Bucky muttered, took off his shoes and jacket and fell back into the bed. "This good?"

 

"This is for you, technically," Steve noted, in the kind of way where he must have known Bucky liked listening to him draw, but they'd never talked about it.Sometimes Steve just did things for Bucky when the mood took him, and it wasn't. They'd never framed it as a reward or anything. Just two fellas helping out one another when they needed to.

 

"No good having rotten pictures of me floating around," Bucky said, "What'll the comic books do then?"

 

Steve huffed, but sat down and drew Bucky and Bucky'd tried to drift away to the shift of paper noises, and the smooth sound of Steve's pen, but it wasn't the same as the charcoal had been. But it was quiet, and Steve had that look on his face, so it worked itself out. )

 

“We’re part of the Army,” Bucky said, slowly. “You don’t own one red cent of us other than what Uncle Sam is lending you. Or the Crown is for Monty. And, I guess, whatever is keeping France ticking-”

 

“They can’t just-” Steve started and finished because well. They could, and Steve knew that, but some bloodied part of his brain wasn’t listening to the paper-and-ink. Wouldn’t be the first time a pair got themselves locked down for a few days because they grew too attached to their men and needed to be… resocialized.

 

Bucky wasn’t the best sharpshooter in Uncle Sam's pocket. There were fellas who’d been sharpshooting since they’d been plunked down in their baby olive drab pajamas and the army gave their family a signing bonus.

 

The Russians certainly had some eagles roosting in their nests who could clean a gun faster than they could lace up their shoes. Bucky did alright, he supposed. Had the head for it, mostly, but it’s not like they’d really done much testing of him. His men’d always had nice things to say about his aim, but you would, wouldn’t you? You had someone getting heat off your back, you’d throw him a bone now and again.

 

The army liked tugging on his lead now and again. Sometimes on R&R without telling Steve. Now this, with the rest of the Howlers on one mission, and Bucky unhooded and circling some other bit of prey.

 

Bucky figured it was one of three things. The most cut-and-dry was that he was the closest man to a good opportunity.

 

On his charitable days, he figured he was the only sharpshooter who could settle into his own skin for a few days without minding. There was some strategic sense in that, for all Steve rarely used it. Fewer provisions, easier to hide, easier to ship out.

 

On his more tired days, he figured he was the best fella who wasn’t attached to a proper regiment, and the brass figured the Howlers were the newsreels and funnies around the Feature Super Soldier presentation. Interchangeable, except for how Steve was fond of them.

 

“A bonus is a bonus, Steve,” Bucky said, tired all over again, “don’t know where we’re going to stake a claim once this is over, but we need money for it.”

 

“We're making money,” Steve argued, the two of them still walking until they hit the Howler’s tent. Bucky shoved him at Dum Dum, Falsworth and Morita doing weapon checks. "And it won't do us any good if you're out there without backup."

 

“Time him on weapons checks before he talks my ear off,” Bucky said and cleared out to get ready.)

 

So Sergeant Barnes had been… gone, while the Howlers went off to another HYDRA base.

 

The rest of the Howlers were good marksmen like the brass had said.  It wasn’t like they’d be hurting for clean shots, and they hadn't really been using Bucky's skills in infiltration missions.

 

Still, it’d made Bucky’s skull itch the entire time he was away, his heart leaping oddly in his chest when he caught the colors out of the corner of his eye and it was just a flag.

 

Bucky's team, such as it was, gotten in and gotten out and it was the sort of thing nobody's writing about, except as a magic trick. One second a fella is there, then poof: his mate is splattered with blood and staring in confusion, and somebody else gets them not so clean, takes their jaw off and-

 

So they were back together, and they ask after Bucky's mission and he shrugged: "Can't say much. How about yours?"

 

And Dum Dum had clapped his hands and smiled.

 

For the Howlers, instead of a routine engagement, their ship had been blasted by some… experimental submarine right out of the clear blue nothing.

 

The ship began to go down, so the Howler’s ended up on a raft in the middle of the ocean like they’re gonna find some tropical island and live out Swiss Family Robinson or Robinson Crusoe or why were they all named Robinson? Was Tarzan’s real last name Robinson and-

 

“Cap here swims down and boards the damn thing,” Dum Dum said, high on carnie showmanship and at least one sheet to the wind with Naval strength gin.

 

Bucky’d be more uppity about the whole thing, except Steve’d hadn’t much let him out of arm's reach since Bucky hit camp. Sniffed him all over like he’d been lost in the woods instead of part of an organized strike team.

 

The rest of the Howlers had scented over him a little, pulled him into the knot of them and Bucky wasn’t too sure if any of ‘em had noticed they weren’t letting anybody else get too close. Kind of sweet in its own way.

 

Once the storytelling started he'd pulled Bucky in and been too tired to do much about it, slumping into the minding because it was easier than making a fuss.

 

Steve started up his rusty kinda-purr, mostly to himself as Bucky leaned into him. Bucky collapsed that little bit more, feeling like a tightrope cord allowed to go slack.

 

“So Cap free dives somehow gets inside and captures in-service submarine, Of course, we’re all twiddling our thumbs on this raft with no idea of what to do, and if we have to paddle to shore I just know somebody is going to eat me.”

 

“No one’s gonna eat you, Dugan, you’re already halfway pickled,” Morita said, whittling away at something. He liked having little wooden animals to give to kids in the towns they passed through. Never said anything about it. Sometimes Steve’d draw them and Morita’d send that back home to his ma instead of a letter. His ma wrote back now and again, and he read the letters fine, a furrow between his eyebrows and keeping it to himself.

 

Dugan took a drink, laughed and went on about how they’d found a map to the HYDRA base on the sub. So they’d used it to slip in and found;

 

“Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Goddamn ghost town. So we split up like normal, only Cap swanned off without me so guess who’s the cheese in the middle of a goddamn HYDRA base.”

 

“You could have joined up with Flasworth and Morita-” Steve started, like it wasn't the fifth damn time they’d had that argument

 

“Thank God I didn’t-” Dum Dum shot back, “Then I would have-”

 

“Don’t spoil the story!” Morita said, holding his...knotted bush? Up to the firelight. The weather was war, but it got cold enough at night that it still brought some kinda...caveman need to start a fire and sit around it when it was on offer. Made Bucky think about his Barbarian Steve daydream again. The lot of them in some cave without a single extra human anywhere they could smell. Like a real wolf pack, out in the nowhere.

 

“Right, anyways. Apparently, Cap here finds this...completely trashed lab, but all the papers are still there because the HYDRA folks must have beaten it in a hurry. Microfilm burned and big smears over all the chalkboards, but Cap finds And he’s reading and wait-” Dugar stopped himself, snapping his finger, “When did you learn German?”

 

“Hmm?” Steve was sort of absently scent marking at Bucky with Bucky resting his full weight on Steve’s shoulder.

 

“Those notes were in German, right Jones?”

 

Jones hummed in agreement, deep into some book or other in French while Dernier smoked his weird cigarettes and read over his shoulder. “I brought them back for Stark. Little wet but he should be able to get notes off of them.”

 

“When’d you learn German, Cap?” Dum Dum repeated and Steve blinked for a second.

 

“He’s been practicing,” Bucky covered, because Steve stopped purring and because Steve’d stopped working in general. “Just because you spend every second at camp flexing for the folks at home and playing rummy, doesn’t mean Steve’s sitting around batting his eyelashes for the camera."

 

"More like making moon eyes at-" Morita started.

 

“You think I play rummy? What am I a grandma-” Dum Dum took the bait like he was supposed to. Eyed Bucky steadily, like he was supposed to and Steve frowned into the dirt, because apparently, he hadn’t even noticed he knew.

 

“The story Dugan,” Morita complained. “Get to the monster bit.”

 

“The what bit?” Bucky sat up because of course there was a monster bit. HYDRA couldn’t outsmart Steve because it was like trying to swat a fly with a log. No finesse.

 

So they’d throw magical tanks and weird submarines and, apparently, goddamn monsters into the mix. Just for fun. Just for a laugh.

 

Steve started to get a smoke out. Wrestled Bucky back to lean against him and Bucky went because there was now a monster part of the story to deal with. There’d been some...ugly piece of work down in the caves or tunnels or whatever that’d grabbed Morita and Falsworth down.

 

Steve read about them working on making a bigger and better sort of fight against the unclean scourge in the lab notes and sure enough: multi-headed monster sulking in the sewers. Morita started to talk over Dum Dum, who went back to drinking.

 

“So it grabs me and Limey here,” Morita pointed his knife at Falsworth, who had his hat just so again, mustache trimmed to an inch of its life and listening quietly. “Drags us to who knows where, and then Cap burst in and starts cutting off heads.”

 

“Which had the unfortunate side effect of causing two more heads to replace it,” Falsworth said when Morita didn’t pick up the line again. “It seemed they wanted to make a real Hydra after all, though heaven knows what they were intended to do with the dreadful thing.”

 

The thing about HYDRA was that, sure, it had more advanced tech than any dog in the fight, but they couldn’t pick a target. One week it was super soldiers, the next week it was battle suits. Then they were making snake monsters in their basement and creating experimental submarines. Zola was some sort of magpie of a head scientist. Not that Stark was a lot better, but he tended to work off of fulfilling a need.

 

HYDRA goons themselves were dime a dozen, but the thing they were guarding at least added some terrible kinda variety.

 

“-then writes Hilfe on the wall, and Jones is up there telling me-” Steve started and Jones cut him off. Bucky didn't quite clock it because he’s busy noticing Steve staring at him. Steve talked like it was them somewhere quiet. And Bucky… floated on that idea for a second.

 

“So Stark has a bunch of HYDRA scientists who managed to meld themselves into a giant monster?” Bucky asked, eventually, because somebody had to keep the ball rolling. Steve looked up at everyone else, but started petting at the back of Bucky’s neck, where the hairs went short and sort of...soft, he guessed. Bucky wondered, in a drifty-half-thought way about what it’d be like being all collapsed into one body with Steve. What he sounded like from inside his own head.

 

“Yeah, he’s working on separating them,” Jones said. “Lock them up after that. Can’t say I'm overflowing with sympathy for them."

 

So Bucky’d shot a big wig so brass would pay him extra. Technically in uniform. Technically in battle conditions. Not a war crime, exactly, but if it’d been outside of war they sure would have called it murder. Assassination maybe.

 

Steve’d stolen a sub, found a monster and brought it back home for their Futurist in residence to break down into war criminals.

 

Put that in the damn biography, then.

* * *

 

**[Who Knows Where]**

Dear Cecil,

 

Your letter finds us well. You will be proud to note Alex now has a job as a teller and is making a full .94 cents per hour (not including overtime and premiums). His supervisor has come over for dinner and it is very likely he could be bringing home a full forty dollars per week after his next review. He has a good head for numbers and your parents are very proud.

 

The children would like more stories about the war if you can think of appropriate ones. They believe it to be quite an adventure. Your parents are likely to consign them to the military when they are of age, considering their temperaments and the keenness with which they read your letters.

Your parents mentioned that your salary, such that it is, has been a great help to the family. Though everything is rationed these days, we have been able to start putting some little odds and ends back into savings. If you come home safe and sound, it is possible Alex can get you a job at the bank if you make no headway into the military.

From me, I say that this sort of work is not a cut flattering to everyone, and I know how well you always helped me mind the Littles, so I think you a career as a teacher might better suit. It is less money, but a respectable profession, and you always had a way with school. Perhaps you will grow up like me and help a pair raise their own Littles. 

Everyone else sends their regards and well-wishes. I send you my love. You are a good boy, not one cut for this terrible business. I will keep adding you to my prayers.

 

Love,

Pricilla.

* * *

 

 **[May 1944]**  

Steve was always easy to spot in the field: bright primary colors. It was the point of the uniform. He could hide it under one of his jackets if he wanted. A bird of paradise in the goddamn thicket. The rest of ‘em were drab as mama ducks, which was the point. Keep ‘em running the way the Howlers wanted them to. Round them up, pen them in and blow the damn thing up. HOWLER: A War Prosopography Of The World’s Deadliest Sheepdogs.

 

Clockwork Barnes would have picked off the ripest before they could hit the base, of course. HYDRA had officers and skilled like anybody else. Weren’t any here yet, which was a shame.

 

They didn’t wear iron crosses to trade in for bonuses, which was a shame. But that had a bit less of a sting since Steve could go up to brass, ask for something, and get it. Didn’t exist yet? Give them a few weeks. Steve had himself a notebook out of some kinda... mineral based paper that stretched instead of tore and pen ink wouldn’t run if it got wet.

 

(Steve’d had to move out of charcoal. Pencils and pens suited Cap. Had a purity of purpose and utility that worked with Captain American's steely-eyed speeches.

 

Steve would always be a soft, smudged fella in Bucky’d head.  He missed Steve’s lumpy self-portrait like he missed hot coffee.

 

A month ago, Carter had passed him a picture of Steve from his intake training. Jaw set and staring off into the distance.  Bucky’d looked at it a stretch, then tucked it into his jacket pocket and they'd go their own ways.)

 

Centered in the Howler circle was the base itself. Crashed in and found... nothing. Nobody. Not even the normal lab coats poking around and doing bad science. (And evil science sure: throw that in too. Jones'd look down at their findings and make noises about bias and samples sizes.)

 

Carter looked at the burned out lab. Picked her way around the overturned tables and broken beakers, gun up and eyes steady. Steve hunched down and took the opposite sight lines: the two of them the perfect picture of an adventure novel.

 

After a moment Steve made the hand signal to find what they could, and he and Peggy started digging through the lab. Another base empty. HYDRA was getting advanced warning somehow, and Carter had that look in her eye like she knew it too.

 

Bucky walked through the halls. His footsteps echoed against the metal and concrete.

 

The lights were still on, and water still hooked up. He turned on a faucet the clean water spilled out and smelled clean, so they couldn’t be that long gone. The kitchen had been gutted, and anything left smelled like rat poison. He filled his canteen and took a drink, staring at the door that led to the stairwell.

 

“Any signs of prisoners?” Bucky muttered as Jones rounded the corner from the main bunk area, all looted and wrecked.

 

Jones pointed to the stairwell, where the cages usually were. HYDRA bases had been a copy-job, the same blueprint for each one as far as they could tell. Only changed if the landscape made them. Bucky guessed they wanted to be able to ship their bodies anywhere without having to bother telling them where to go.

 

Jones went first, Bucky stood behind him with his Thompson out, both of them peering around the corners and listening to all that howling nothing.

 

The cages were empty, but newly so. They still smelled of piss, fear, and sickness like they always did. They checked down each corner and, eventually, found them.

 

Some still on the table, killed, however, was easiest. The rest of them lumped together along a wall and-

 

Jones got him by the elbows and the world phased in and out of color. He sat Bucky up against the wall and went to take a look, with his medkit in one hand and a pistol in the other. Bucky sat, stared at the long line of cages.

 

Jones radioed up: "Prisoners DOA."

 

(“Can I say something?” Morita’d said later, driving with Bucky in the passenger seat, after the funeral.

 

Carter had everything that wasn't too burned to salvage. They’d burned the rest of the base down. Tucked the lot of them together under a tree and carved in the date. They’d report the findings back to brass, let a support crew get back and sort it out. Couldn’t leave them the way they’d found them.

 

“The chair recognizes Jim.” Bucky’d responded, new cigarette in his mouth, watching his own smoke flash behind them.

 

“So you name your evil organization after a monster, right?” Morita’d said, fingers tapping over the wheel, “Why do you name it after one that loses?”

 

“They’re bad at names, the lot of ‘em. I overheard some fellas talking a while back about that damn Nazis. What were Nazis before Nazis? It was a stupid peasant or something, right?” Dum Dum joined in from the back. “Jonsey. Something with Bavaria?”

 

“Ignaz, which was short for some name. Meant a clumsy person.” Jones’d said, he and Carter tucked together being eggheads, working around Steve. “They don’t much like when people call them Nazis.”

 

“Jesus wept,” Dum Dum’d said. Feet up over Steve, since Steve’d fallen asleep the second the engine started running.

 

“You know the first time you hear about the Hydra? Is when Hercules kills it.” Morita would keep his eyes on the road. He was the most used to driving straight through nowhere, so all the trees would keep catching his eye.

 

There had been a gun mounted in the back, but Steve’d torn it out, so anybody but him could drive. That was the rule: the wheelman was anybody but Steve.

 

“It doesn’t even keep in theme. They’re all about the Norse stuff. Name it after that one snake that’s going to eat the world,” Morita’d said, “That’s the one with the snake right?”

 

“We’ll Eat Our Own Ass is a little less catchy than Cut Off One Head And Two More Will Rise,” Bucky muttered. Jones’d laughed, which sorta woke Steve up. Carter and Jones’d patted their table back to sleep.)

 

On the track of Zola they'd always found bodies. Whatever he was supposed to be doing, he wasn't good at it. If he was on the path to a better Red Skull, then he'd come up all blanks. But somehow, someway, HYDRA knew when the Howlers were coming and managed to clean them out.

 

Carter was there when they could get her, to autopsy the base for intel. Better than they woulda in any case. Lot of them looking under “W” for Weapon, Magic. Or: "Hey Jones? What is a weapon in- Oh, still W? Waffe? How about- oh Magische Waffe? Really? Well, alright."

 

“Next one,” Carter said to Steve. Steve looked up, filthy and angry and ready to burn something important down. “I believe it’s time we employ different counterintelligence tactics. They can’t be abandoning all their weapons facilities.”

 

“Too expensive,” Steve agreed, “But they’ve had some kind of advanced warning.”

 

“So there is either a leak on our side, or they have another means of ascertaining which facility we mean to attack next.”

 

Steve’s plans ran the gamut of stupid, so were hard to predict, sure. The thing of it with HYDRA was that wanted to disrupt big ol’ regiments of folks. They needed weapons to do that. They weren't surgical. Red Skull'd burst into the European Theatre to hack it apart, which was great if you had any elbow room. Or you wanted to level a city and weren't too fussed about collateral damage, which they weren’t. HYDRA needed to keep...finding their manpower under whatever musky rock they found those fellas in. If the US military had turned and focused fire on HYDRA as the main force? HYDRA would have planted their feet and fired.

 

Howlers were seven idiots with a grudge. Sometimes you needed a sledgehammer and sometimes you needed a lockpick. Carter was the lockpick, the Howlers were a step more towards the sledgehammer side of it.

 

A crowbar: could open a door and a fella’s skull the same. HYDRA had stopped trying to fight them and instead figured out how to get out of dodge before they showed up and wrenched them out like a rotting thing.

 

Steve nodded, thoughtful, looking at the walls like they’d roll over and tell him what they’d seen.

 

Carter looked at Bucky. Bucky stared at the table. At the body on the table. At every smearing across the concrete and metal and he felt something very small and quiet snap in his gut.

 

“Sign us up with another infantry. Something big,” Bucky said. “Make it look like you’ve reallocated resources to your main enemy since these last few have been a bust.”

 

“You would have to fight as infantry in the meantime,” Carter noted. “The opposite side of this is that if you continue on your path, you at least know you’re disrupting HYDRA in some capacity.”

 

“There could come a point where we have run out of weapons facilities to target, and with no leads, this could give them even more ample opportunity to plan and strike,” Falsworth noted.

 

“Hell of a risk,” Dum Dum agreed, “we’d need to do training. Might be some uh...friction.”

 

Carter considered something in the middle-distance, then and looked at Steve. “I may have something. As risky as Dugan believes it to be. Perhaps more.”

 

Steve looked at them, then back at her. “High reward?”

 

“Potentially. Two birds and one stone if we aim right.”

 

Steve nodded, “well hear it out, then.”

 

She took a breath, nodded and wrapped herself up in some kind of mental exoskeleton, all braced shoulders and squared feet, “Barnes you’ll need to radio this in to get support. Morita and Rogers can handle securing the perimeter. Jones, I need you with me to look over files. Everyone else go and check if there is anything worth salvaging or any indication where they might have fled.”

 

They paused.

 

“What?” Steve said looking away, “She’s the one with the plan.”

 

“It was just a sensible one, is all.” Bucky said as they moved out, “we’re not used to those.”

 

Steve huffed and they stuck their teeth into the bloated corpse of a HYDRA base and shook out what they could.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Huge shoutout to @Kitt3nz for the beta help!

**[May 1944]**

Bucky’d parked himself at one of the abandoned desks with a sorta sausage roll and sorta plan.

 

He’d grabbed a traveler of whatever had been hot drinking at the canteen. Room temperature, now, like the sausage roll.

 

He set it next to Stark. Close enough that he’d scent it, but far enough it wouldn't end up on the floor. He’d gotten good at that with Steve and his paper cups of hot coffee grabbed from a corner store or automat. 

 

He wasn’t expecting a reaction and didn’t get one. He picked at his sausage roll, which had the same hard-done-by sogginess of most British food.

  
Stark kept working. Picked up the traveler drink and looking at his chalkboard.

 

Bucky collected what the desk had to offer. If he fell asleep he didn’t know when his next opportunity would be. Odds and office ends, for the most part. A wrench and a few wire harnesses in the bottom right drawer. A ruler, rubber bands, some paper clips in the top. The rest was notebooks and pens, files, and a neat manicuring set.

 

Armed with the knowledge he might be here for the next five or six hours he put everything down in front of him. Wasn’t too often that the Howlers’ path crossed Stark’s, in the scheme of things.

 

They didn’t put Stark out on the edge of Allied territory. They didn’t tuck Steve back into the heart of it unless the Howlers had found something worth looking at.

 

Carter and them had already delivered what there was out of the abandoned base. Hadn’t been much to loot out of the base, for the most part, so looked like Stark was pecking away at the brunt of the Nazi problem.

 

The fellas had gone down to a dancehall set up somewhere. Rumor had it they’d gotten it kitted out with a jukebox and some gin if you were in the mood for it. Not a comb house, more's the pity. Under normal circumstances, a light-footed dame and a half chance of feeling normal would have been right up Bucky's alley.

 

When the Howlers took time off they painted the town any color on offer. They'd been hooting and hollering about going to a proper dancehall since they'd hit town.

 

Bucky’d begged off. Said he was craving a good sleep about as much as a home-cooked meal. It was… some kinda testament to something that the Howlers all said he could use it.

 

The Howlers were cottoning on to the fact that Steve’d never needed to mind a soul in his life. Bucky’d always figured himself an easy-going sort. Steve’d take care of Bucky when he got it in his nose to pitch woo, sure. Bucky’d been happy with the way he’d been an essential fixture in their household and figured. Well, figured one of the reasons he and Steve caught was on account of Bucky not needing much minding. Steve wasn't the sort to stand on ceremony. Didn't like Bucky greeting him with a kiss. Never cared much about how Bucky looked or that sort of thing.

 

He thought a lot about the night before he shipped out. Not on purpose. Not the... later part of it. But Steve sending him out dancing, and watching him. Feeding his drinks and rubbing his cheek against Bucky’s.

 

Mrs. Rogers, may she rest in peace, had needed to line up her ducks when it came to Steve, same as Bucky’s parents. With Steve’s... everything, she'd pushed most of her chips on the skilled position bet. Put the effort and money into sending him to art school. And then it'd been about trying to teach Steve to pick his battles.

 

For all that’d worked.

 

Bucky picked at his sausage roll. Killing time working to balancing the ruler off the desk by as little space as possible. The wrench was top heavy, so it stood to reason he could put most of the weight behind the tipping point. Wire harnesses did a better job of securing than the rubber bands. Getting rid of the swingback was the tricky bit. A combination of wire harnesses and paper clips could —

 

A man could tell when he had Stark’s full attention. It was something sharp against the skin. Stark: from the English, Scottish, German & Hebrew: Unyielding.

 

(There’d been a lady near Bridge & Jay who’d tell your fortune for a nickel. She’d had books about the meaning of any old thing. Names, scent notes, but mostly stars.

 

Bucky’d helped moved her furniture. She’d been low on funds and flush with books. She’d offered to tell his future or make him a charm. He’d shrugged and said he knew what road he was on.

 

She’d cocked her head, then picked up his palm, stared down at the lines.

 

“Well, you’ve got the long and short of it,” she’d agreed at last, after a moment of consideration. “Long walk for a short drink of water.”

 

Let him take the name book and a shaved beef sandwich home.)

 

“Cap send you on an errand? How’s the shield harness holding up? Reinforced the leather but we had a hell of a time getting the fit right. I had to re-do his gloves for a better grip on the shield, too. That vibranium stuff is another animal, I’m telling you. Expensive as hell and dangerous to move around, only found it on accident. Sort of ended up making a shield out of it by accident, not like smelting anything. Hey, how much you know about fusion recreations?” Stark leaned back against the desk and looked at the wrench hanging from 1” of the ruler. Started to fiddle with it.

 

“Protective cream,” Bucky said after Stark'd let off some of his steam. Stark was quick on the uptake, sure. Bucky always needed a while to come back from whatever he’d been reading or thinking about. Seemed like Stark could do with the same courtesy.

 

He got up and looked at the chalkboard. Stark was working on the instantaneous energy output of something.

 

He felt his mind teeter a second, slipping a little into the chalk. He closed his eyes and grabbed the blue by the edges and shoved it away.

 

Stark wasn’t looking, and if he had been Bucky couldn't -- He couldn’t go scattering his marbles all across Stark’s lab. He needed information he wasn't dragging out of folks the normal way. But, well. Get Stark started on something and he'd let it roll a good while.

 

“You going home to handle a rivet gun?” Stark asked, “bad call Barnes. Far as I remember Rogers was pretty fond of you. He might go home and launch another rescue mission. Cap versus the Captains of Industry! Has the Red, Blue And White Gone Yellow Or Just Red --?” Stark laughed and tilted his hand around, “Something pithier than that, what do you think -- Oh Hell they've all gone home."   
  


“If you don't have any ideas, I can go get Pro-tex from the Quartermaster.” Bucky’d said, careful to keep looking at the chalkboard until Stark bullied himself into view. “I figured since you got Steve's uniform and shield deflecting knives and bullets, a little oil wouldn't be a bother."   
  
“You realize the list of things the government wants me to make is --” Stark said, frowning at the chalkboard, almost falling back into it before rounding on Bucky.

 

“Well, anyways. Skincare is not even in the margins. Not unless we can use it to kill Nazis. Hmm. Some kind of poison lipstick maybe. How to stop it from absorbing then -- "

 

“Sounds like the sort of thing that could use an impervious skin tight base,” Bucky agreed, "Like a protective cream."

 

Stark tapped his pen against the table. "Beta puts on lipstick, gives the head honcho a smooch and boom. Not poison, no. That's always a mess, could be an evening color to hide the -- Ahh, knock them out. Goodnight Kiss, ha! And a deep red to keep you lot happy. Not that I focus on that and winning a war."

 

"That's what I read in the society pages."

 

“Earned that one." Stark hadn’t so much formed pack. He stood as some kinda of telephone wire for birds to land on now and again. “Fine, I guess. I have it half invented already. It's a new Dawn of Innovation, I'm telling you. We get the Fascist threat worked out and America is going to boom like you wouldn't believe. A TV in every house and a flying car by '55."

  
  


Bucky looked at the chalkboard. _235U was something that’d make about 19.54 m/J which was…_

 

Bucky didn’t know much about power outputs, but he thought of the little energy meter outside one of their flats. Put a nickel in and get lights for the evening.

 

Another part of him, something with no memory attached to it, turned over on itself. Couldn't have put it into words what it felt like, exactly. But it was in some hollowed out space in his skull, waiting like bad news.

 

“Dernier’s got oil based and water based work. Wrecking his hands and we need them nimble. Gloves are..." Bucky shrugged, eyes wandering trying to catch on something. Couldn't have said what, just like he had the same feeling as when he was in a crowd searching for Steve, except now he always started at the wrong eye level.

 

“There are times when gloves get in the way.” Stark agreed, looking at his own hands. Worn in and hard done by. Manicured, though. Bucky imagines he checked himself into a spa now and again to get fine-tuned like there was a People version of a grease pit.

 

Stark was a Potential that had a flighty sort of group. He was still a Potential at his age, made a company, worked with the army: No pack. No omega. He tomcatted around town, but never for keeps. Papers never had the same person hanging off Starks arm and Bucky didn't have a clear bead on why.

 

Best guess? Stark had always seemed like an elaborate cup game, from what Bucky’d seen of him. Proud as hell, sure, but shuffled things around for the sake of it. Brought in a car that didn’t fly, but a World of Tomorrow Expo packed with wallets all there to watch it fail.

 

“The stuff they have on the market is a joke,” Stark muttered, picking up a pencil and sketching something out in a notebook. “Got that new silicone that might…” Stark trailed off and scribbled with his pencil.

 

“Skincare’s profitable,” Bucky added, wandering over to one of the HYDRA power sources they'd liberated from the enemy, tucked away and glowing in a case.

 

“Not as profitable as a tank-stopping bullet.  I don’t even need to worry about distribution on that one. Demand for cosmetics may be high, but getting it where it needs to go is a logistical nightmare,” Stark tapped the pad of paper with the back of his pencil. “If the options are killing the Hitlers or getting dames enough powder, then I’ll wager on the bullets for now.”

 

He’d looked up at Bucky, then, changing on a dime. “I had half an eye on a better indelible lipstick. Bromo acid is a cheat and not for everyone. But then your lot ruined it. Oh sure Dames might like it the whole: won’t kiss off, drink off or eat off shtick. But you’d preserve a kiss print like the shroud of Christ. I did get some traction in the television business, but not a lot of other use for the greens.”

 

Bucky’s eyes wandered back to the what. Crystal? Engine? They’d snatched up more than a few HYDRA guns, but with the whole... not really knowing what they did or how they did it made a fella a bit leery about depending on one. 

 

Stark had proven the whole... mechanism of them was easy to figure out. No more interesting than a cattle prod if you wanted to get into the weeds about it.

 

The onlyly interesting bit was the part that powered it, and that was a locked room murder case of its own making.

 

“If I was going to the small screen I’d fix the Iconoscope camera, get a better color read. Or hey, color televisions, that’d be a ride. Film these days is a joke. Blows out Roger's hair and makes Jones look like a shadow. Seems to me if the human eye can see something, there's no reason a machine can't do it just as well.” Stark picked up from wherever his brain’d left off.

 

He should have come during the day, with more things to distract him. When there’d be liquid dripped into beakers.  Centrifuges that whipped solvents around. Techs running their soles down for whatever hare-brained ideas Stark had  _ cholent _ -ing. Half a dozen starts to things that Stark left in his wake before moving onto the next idea. Funny that he had a business, all said. Potentials were great at the kickstart, not so great at rounding out the routine.

 

Instead it was them, the quiet, and the blue glow of the HYDRA battery. And the longer he looked at it, the more he wanted to touch it. To grab it and push it into his stomach. He tried to look back at Stark, but now that his eye had landed they weren't willing to move.

 

His stomach plummeted with a distinct  _ not now _ vertigo.

 

“Cap working you too hard there, pal?” Stark asked, and Bucky kept rubbing at his head for any excuse not to open his eyes and fall into... whatever had happened out there with the island and the runestone.

 

“Nah,” Bucky said, and he caught a new-old smell.  Something more familiar from before he’d hitched his wagon to Steve. He only got wind of a Potential when they had their blood up one way or another.

 

Either scenting down Steve’s lure and leaning on doorways, or with their backs up about something one of ‘em did. Potentials we used to having their fights ended for them. More with words than a fist to the face. Which, well.

 

(Explained why Steve was still so fond of a small toop outfit and the element of surprise.)

 

He hadn’t gotten the hit of a Potential being… protective, really since he’d been in shortpants. Carter could smell like it now and again without any of them knowing. She had a light touch and a good disguise.

 

“I'm worried about him,” Bucky said, because he couldn't stare at the HYDRA battery and he couldn't not stare at the HYDRA battery. So: this. He could play up the aw shucks angle plenty well for the press. "Never got out the habit my whole life, for all he'd want me to."

 

 _Golly, he just wanted to do right by his best guy._ Aww, look at him, a good little dowry who’d gone off to the big bad war but didn’t complain a lick. He didn’t think that’d play as well with Stark if he hammed it up too much. Stark had plenty of decorative auxiliaries batting their eyelashes, hanging off his arm. Calling him Daddy-o and lifting their chins for a nice necklace.

 

Bucky braced himself against the table and made like he was staring into space for all he couldn't take his eyes off the damn... The damn bright pulsing blue trapped inside the wrong little box. And that word twinged at him.  _ Wrong _ . It was in the wrong place and he could reach out and get it to the right place if he could only --

 

Stark had gone still. Bucky could feel it, a place where movement or talking should be. Waking up and walking out into New York without a scratch or a skitter to its name.

 

“It’s funny is all, knowing your best guy since the schoolyard. Life’s work right there." Bucky shrugged and that was true. Though less a job and more like a what? A calling? Whatever made missionaries decide to pick up stakes and move to who knew where. Bucky'd never felt much in step with the folks who puffed up, bitched and sighed about how  _ demanding _ their people were. Best thing a fella could hope to be in the world was useful. Being needed was a once in a lifetime sort of deal. The only piece in the shop that would do.

 

"So you throw yourself into it. Then you get a letter that says you gotta leave him alone somewhere. You do your duty because they say it's protect home and country.”

 

Bucky rubbed at his palm, where the wounds from April had gone tight and shiny. Dum Dum would come at him with some circus remedy now and again. But Bucky was an old hand at waving away Dum Dum’s brand of patched-together minding.

 

Bucky finally cranked his eyes away. Stark was looking down at his notebook, head tilted and hands in his pocket There was a soft spot here. Something bruised and he could fit his thumb right up against it. Seemed a shame not to press down to see what happened.

 

“How about you, Stark?” Bucky asked, still rubbing at the meat of his palm, trying to get the itch to calm. “Got anybody tucked safe and sound where you left ‘em?”

 

Stark turned and looked back at Bucky. “Seems like you’re talking around the shape of a complaint there, Barnes. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm an in demand sort of guy, so unless you can pay my consulting fee..."

 

“Who me?” Bucky knew the posture of a Potential-Being-Threatened better than he knew what his own body was telling him, most days.

 

"You came here hunting something, and it wasn't hand cream. And if you wanted to kill me, your record says I wouldn't see it coming."

 

“What’ve I got to have to complain about?" Bucky shrugged a shoulder, settling into the frame of his skeleton. Feeling more like a coat left somewhere than a real boy. "Been trying to keep my best guy safe my whole life, so I should thank you, right? Made him the heavyweight champion of the world."

 

Bucky stretched his fingers until he heard a quiet pop from his wrist and let some of the hold in his bones go.

 

“Oh I see," Stark said, "Sorry, pal. Whatever juice Erskine pumped him up with was a house specialty.” Stark puffed up a little, looked Bucky up and down. “So don't worry, you're still the leading expert on your boy there. Unless you have some sins you'd like to confess?"

 

“See," Bucky saw the energy source flicker out of the corner of his eye and the itch in his spine turn to some sort of. Recentering. Bones shifting back into place and taking all his muscle and guts with them. Less marionetting around the joint.

 

"That's the part I get stuck on. I figure if America was going through the trouble of trusting a German scientist based on his research, well. Gotta have some proof in the pudding, huh? Can’t’ve all been notes and one skinless Nazi.”

 

Stark met his eyes and Bucky wondered if he’d had a decent night’s sleep in his life.

 

No one was den-mothering him enough. So Bucky had the same... half-fantasy he always had. Spinning out the idea of Steve deciding to bed down with Stark so they could live like swells. Lap of luxury and plenty of funds to fight what cause Steve got a taste for.

 

They could adopt some kids. Hell, they could adopt every kid in need of it in New York, if they put their minds to. it. Bucky half itched to, what? Tuck him in and read a bedtime story? Shove him against a wall and get his teeth in him?

 

The Daydream didn’t have legs so Bucky blinked back and he and Stark hadn’t broken eye contact.

 

“So there's lab testing somewhere," Bucky filled in, “don’t know who, don’t know how. Erskine had to’ve had enough research supporting it that the army put their chip on your number. And you trusted it enough to figure how to rope it up and bind it."

 

“Carter was the one who got him out," Stark said. "You should ask her, except ah. You don't want to look bad in front of the potential Misses, huh? Sorry to disappoint but loose lips sink ships.”

 

“Not asking for anything classified," Bucky stepped closer “I'm curious about if you’re willing to stand behind what you started.”

 

Bucky felt a tug at his gut. A splash of something that worked like the sharp smell of blood and a cup of coffee. Jolting into him, radiating up and out through his limbs until they were both standing there. Stark vibrating with the internal jet fuel that kept his candle burning at both ends. Bucky flushed up with that fear edge, barbed wire energy scratching through him. Fuzzing out the corners of his head until he looked at Stark and wanted --

 

Bucky grabbed Stark by the back of the neck and stuffed his nose against the joint of his jaw. Not a single thought jangling in his head.

 

Nice soap, good hair-care and high-end cologne. Which, wasn’t it funny? That cologne came from Germany.  **_Kölnisch Wasser_ ** , by an Italian who’d made a citrus spirit. The fella’d named it after his new hometown even though it reminded him of an Italian spring morning.

 

Stark’s natural scent snaked through it from the base up, all sweat and... hell. Bucky didn’t have the words for it. He wasn’t a perfumer. He could scent trouble from who knew how many blocks.

 

(Bucky’d find himself running hither-thither down a hall, heart racing for no reason. Only to find Steve in a hallway of blood and bodies. Standing still and scenting.

 

Bucky’d stand there, panting at the mouth of it, finger along the trigger guard. Steve'd touch his nostrils and look at his clean fingers, then up at Bucky.

 

“Clear?” Steve’d ask, the both of them scenting Steve and blood and sorting that out in their heads.

 

Bucky’d swallow, no idea what sector he’d been in, “Clear.” )

 

Stark went still under his hands. Bucky fancied, for a second, he could see the spark of his nerves. New York all bright lights under the skin.

 

He could feel Stark’s muscles tense under his palm, but Stark didn’t smell like fear. Fear was acrid. Took up too much space. Curiosity was a light-footed thing.

 

“Steve,” Bucky said, finally, dragging that up from some stubborn part of himself. “Speaks German now. Handy, you’d think, except how Steve didn’t seem to notice he’d learned it.”

 

Bucky felt himself half-near crackling to life.  Like he was all full of new blood. New air. They’d taken out every tired and gummed up part of him and got it factory fresh. He wasn’t drifting in the blue hellscape again. He wasn’t falling into the sniper mindset where the world became a simple diagram. He was Ford-fresh off the line.

 

“Erskine figured his serum might give a fella back some brain plasticity. Like how kids pick up stuff quick, but once you hit middle age  _ poof _ .”  Bucky breathed, held on and stood his ground, and Stark didn’t try and make him stop. Bucky wondered if Stark knew he was leaning into Bucky’s space now.

 

“Stark,” Bucky said from some closet in his own brain, and his voice sounded. Wrong? He could almost see it leave his mouth, tinged navy and coiled spring-tight.

 

“I want you to think real careful about the fact that you took Steve and put him through the wringer. After the only other test subject, that I know about at least, doesn’t have a face. Were there other test subjects? How are they doing?”

 

“Rogers acting odd?” Stark pushed back. “There a reason you’re coming knocking now?” Stark paused and rolled something around in his head for a minute. “Or, judging from your intake paperwork, you two are pretty good at minding secrets. Unless Rogers has a somebody hanging about New York neither of you told us about.”

 

Bucky knew himself well enough to brace for the sweep of fear that he felt curling up from his gut. It did sweep up and through his brain with a rattle. The cold twist of it didn't have much breath. It swept in and out again.

 

His fingers moved to press along the tendons of Stark’s neck and the fella turned, easy enough. His skin was soft, mostly. A little prickly with years of having beard growth, and Bucky’s hands were half callus. Stark scented to see what kind of hit he’d landed, but no blood in the water.   
  


“What were you doing last October, Stark?” Bucky asked and knew from the pitch of scent that he’d found the bruise. Stark’d overreached and Bucky’d found an opening. 

 

Nobody’d ever said Stark was slow on his toes. “You jealous there, pal? I know you had Rogers to yourself for a while, but the man can’t hide his light under a bushel --”

 

“It was a serum made for soldiers. Meaning your German made it for betas.” Bucky said and Stark twisted out of his grip and took a step back, breathing and staring him down. “Had to have been, right? You want to make the muscle on the ground better."

 

Stark fiddled with his shirt sleeves and looked at the chalkboard. "Sound theory,"

 

"So supposing my hypothesis is correct, and the US army got Erskine on board to give them heavy boots on the ground. Well, what was he doing with Steve? Regular army wouldn't take him because he wasn't hitched and couldn't risk the potential pair. Didn't figure it was any more interested in experimenting on one."

 

Stark looked at him, "He was part of a program. Brought on last second. I guess your man kept knocking on the army's doors until Erskine caught him. He had a theory that he didn't so much have a super soldier serum as uh... Jesus, some kind of magic potion. Took what was already in somebody and brought it up front. So Public Enemy Number Red is out there looking like a comic book monster, because, well --"

 

"He was a storybook monster.”

 

"Right. And Steve, well." Stark spread out his hands. "You're the official number one in his fan club. They have your comic book character answer his questions -- Hey they give you any money for that? Those licensing agreements can be a hell of thing. I should look into --"

 

“Great marketing. What did it bring out in the test subjects?” Bucky looked him over. “I haven’t heard about any other super soldiers, or hell. Super soldier rats, guinea pigs, or dogs. Or you got some super secret bomb sniffing unit?”

 

“All I had were samples,” Stark with a shrug, tilting his head up a little and showing his neck. “The serum had a bad absorption rate, so they needed something to get it to adhere to the marrow and stay there. If they had living test subjects I wasn’t where the sausage got made. So anything that’s happening in the World’s Only Case Study is brand new territory.”

 

Bucky worked his jaw a moment and nodded, looking at the chalkboard. If Stark knew more than he was saying, then they’d be working on making more shock troops instead of whatever shockwave that was spilling out off of Stark’s chalkboard.

 

“The 107th was captured in October. Steve didn't mount a rescue ‘til November." Bucky said, and there was that bruised smell again. It was less a conversation, and more a jeep rattling down some dirt road, nuts and bolts unscrewing as it barrelled down some unpaved stretch of dirt. Stark looked like a hairpin turn in the road. Bucky could either lean into the turn or sail off --

 

"Season must have hit in October. Everyone perks up, comes out of it and sees what's left of the 107th. Ah, well, too far into enemy territory. Given up as a lost cause and pay death dues. Then Steve hears about it, asks you and Carter for a favor and sends case study number one into the belly of the whale. Squids don’t get their blood up, so we didn't get scent of it.”

 

Bucky looked back over at him and Stark still had his head tilted up, but the way schoolkids did. Chin up, waiting for you to come in so they could chin down and tussle. Bucky’d never been much of one for schoolyard power grabs, just as happy to shrug something off as he was to put his foot down about it. They’d never gotten into his space much.  He still got picked for baseball teams and handball games.

 

Steve’d hunt down trouble, but Bucky always liked that about him. Steve wasn’t the kind of person who looked at the world and thought: I guess I can make do with this.   
  
“The way I figure it the rest of the war bedded down for a week except for the out of cycle top brass moving a few pieces around. So, I’m not a doctor, but either Steve had a normal season, or, as I figure it, a serum made for my kind of biology had some kind of effect. You would know that much, at least. And you’d know if anybody warned him beforehand.”

 

"That's between him and --"

 

"Did he know this might do something to him and jump at it anyways? Or did you lie to him? He even notice anything wrong?"

 

They hung there and Bucky'd lost most of the other colors. Midnight edging in on the sides of his vision, hazy as a black out. And his blood felt like he’d finally took a drink of water after a long sleep. His skin filled out around the bones and the exhaustion of the last few months sitting up and blinking.

 

“It’s possible he’s... out of sync.” Stark admitted, “either way he didn’t complain about it.

 

“So he was expecting it.”

 

Stark looked at Bucky and rubbed his mustache for a second, considering. "Well, as the leading expert on your best guy, let me ask you something. You think there might be a reason he'd be, oh I don't know. Feeling fine about never having heat again?"

 

"Never --"

 

"Look, I'm not saying anything I can't say. But let's say the serum does what you think it does. Doesn't worry too much about the nuts and bolts of his particular biology. So the good Doctor tells him they don't know what'll happen, but he could find himself uh... out of step."

 

Stark looks at Bucky and then down at his watch, frowning at it and tapping the face. "Later than I thought it was. Look, I can’t say I was paying him too much attention,” Stark gestured to the chalkboard. “I had things to do and finding myself in the family way -- calm down, with anybody -- isn’t the plan. My aides tell me he wasn’t…” Stark gestured into the nothing of the lab, “But, well. You know.”

 

Bucky didn’t. Ever since Bucky’d been Steve’s and only Steve’s, Steve had always been all snarl the week before his heat. Then went all soft and liquid for the first part of it, and that was alright. It was a goddamn nightmare of uselessness for Bucky for that last stretch, unable to leave, or help, or even know what it was like. Steve never wanted to talk about it.

 

Nobody else seemed as hard done by, afterwards, like they knew something Bucky didn’t. Gliding through heats with a smirk and a chuckle. Going out the week before to stock up on food, and coming out the week after talking about babies in the summer. And Bucky'd stand there in the quiet of the non-storm and wonder what he'd been doing wrong. Nobody'd tell him, except for the quick Time Of Life pamphlet he'd read and folks talking shop. But no details, nothing  _ helpful _ .

 

Stark looked at him for a beat and then sighed, “I guess you wouldn’t, then. He was... fine, for what they could tell me. Too fine, but we don’t have benchmarks here. His room sure didn’t smell like you did when you first signed up, I can tell you that."

 

Bucky looked at the floor and then away. The vive and clangering energy coiling up tighter inside of him with nowhere to go. He looked over at the HYDRA battery, dulled out to nothing. His hands were trembling like two days worth of adrenaline and coffee, so he put them in his pockets.

 

“Supposing we live to October, what do you think I'm in for? I can't line up a shot if I don't know the conditions."

 

Stark rubbed at his hand, looking at the chalkboard now like Bucky wasn’t much holding his interest anymore. “Erskine’s the only man on this earth who knew what that stuff did for sure and he’s dead. I was involved in the lab tests on marrow samples to get his serum to bind to them. Whatever he did to prove to the brass he was on the level is --” He waved it off, and that sounded real enough. Stark wasn’t interested in what someone else had started, save for where he could dig in and make something new. "

 

Bucky fitted his hat over his hair. Pulled up Sergeant Barnes from the tight little ball he’d tucked himself into.

 

He looked at Stark from across the lab, and it it weren't ain’t like Carter. With Stark it was a little more...

 

Steve used to talk about this block of marble in Italy.  How it got discarded by artist after artist for 40 years with only a few chisel marks. And Michelangelo's David’d been born. between the lines of it. Waiting there in the stone. Michelangelo hadn’t scrapped the marble, cast it again in concrete and called it his masterpiece.

 

That weren’t something he could explain to a fella like Stark. Stark wanted to make cars fly, because folks wanted a faster horse. Stark weren’t ever gonna love something the same way as the thing he’d made from his own two hands. Which threw their entire dynamic into a minor key. Bucky weren’t ever gonna love anything as much as he’d love Steve: the fella who’d carved himself out the marble.

 

When Bucky looked up again he was staring across the night sky from some great height. Shivering and vibrating with some kind of manic need that he couldn’t put a finger on for love or money.

 

He climbed down and looked around to see which way he’d come, frowning at the lack of footprints through the dirt, looking up at the wooden structure. Hard to tell what it had been, exactly, and Bucky rubbed his head and headed back toward where he’d seen the dim glow of city, all smoldering low embers. 

 

He figured it was going to be a walk, but he had four smokes and might as well calm his nerves a little since he felt more like a bag full of old hangers than what you might call a person. And there was a nice thought to roll down a hill. Steve picking Bucky up and hanging him up in a closet between missions so he didn’t have to be Bucky or Sergeant Barnes or any kind of puppet or boy. Just a plain old log before some carpenter got at it with ideas.

 

Just hide in the dark when nobody needed him, and Steve’d open the closet and shine him up before standing him up and walking him out again. Sure he got his suits and his shoes mixed up there, but he liked the idea of being shined more than being washed, all said.

 

Steve wasn’t much of a domestic type, and it’d been Bucky who used to shine his shoes more often than not. And it’d be a nice sort of day, Bucky working the polish in and brushing it off and Steve going around with clean, sharp shoes. Some scuffs, but nobody was gonna look at his best fella and think Bucky wasn’t doing right by him.

 

Now Steve shined his own shoes. Couldn’t sew a straight line to save his life, but he’d sit down and get his army boots and spic-n-span and Bucky’s pride stung a little, but it was nice to watch Steve work at it. Fussing over small scuffs and scratches and --

 

“Oh heavens, where did you come from? Gave me a fright.” He heard off to his left, hitting him like an open door. 

 

He looked up and the whole city filled in around him. The sounds following the voice, the smells filling in the cracks of a dozen packs all layering up on each other.  Himself with feet on stone instead of dirt and still smoking, somehow. He must’ve kept going while his mind took a different wander. 

 

That was a shame, he would have liked to save them for when he was occupying his own head.

 

“Sorry guess it was that kinda night,” Bucky said, looking away from the brickerbrack path towards the rest of the city and towards whoever he’d snuck up on without meaning. He was right up next to her front step, her leaning in the doorway, dressing gown tucked in around her.

 

“Well then,” She held up her own smoke, “as you Yanks say: got a light?”

 

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a lighter, flicked it open. The dame leaned in and it took Bucky more than his share of beats to realize her hair was  _ down _ and she was leaning in all sooty eyed but fresh faced. She smelled like good soap and a touch of scent just around her ears. Bucky held the flame steady until he could tuck his lighter away. She inhaled in a slow, long drag like it was her first smoke in days. Exhaled with a melting tilt into the doorframe.

 

“You’re a new face,” She said, still leaning at the door. The house was lit, and maybe there’d be other G.I.’s inside, slumping in their seats and tired as Bucky… well. He wasn’t tired now. He still felt like he couldn’t put his pin down. Just hovering over the board and not really any one thing. “You’re not quite coming  _ or _ going, are you love?”

 

“I’m usually a bit all over the place,” Bucky said, “I go out and wait, and I wait out to go, whatever comes down from above.” He gestured like he had a troop of angels telling him where his feet should go, and, well. Maybe that was a more believable story, all things being said.

 

She laughed and didn’t look like she minded if he kept on walking or came inside. She was barefooted and her toenails matched her fingernails, and probably matched her lipstick, when she wore it. Her better half was probably indoors. Maybe finishing off a show, and it was her job to pull lost little American G.I’s inside. Now that he looked he could see the wooden comb leaning against the lower left of the first floor window. A subtle thing, but if he’d been skin hungry he would have known where to look.

 

“Well you look dead in your plates,” She replied and unfurled smoke into the fog. “My professional opinion is that you could do with a bit of kid glove.”

 

Bucky snorted and leaned on the fence post, and they both smoked a moment, the street empty and the sky quiet. And the Howlers would be shoeing until right before Reveille and Steve was probably neck deep in one thing or another. Bucky just… loose leashed and loose ended. He threw the last remains of his smoke on the ground and killed it with his boot.

 

Put his hands in his pockets and wondered what Steve would think if Bucky came back smelling like another pair, Stark, and tree sap. But then, wasn’t like he kept any money on him. Sometimes he had extra cigarettes or a chocolate bar to trade with the Howlers. He felt the pad of paper in his pocket for Steve and maybe she thought that was a money clip.

 

“Afraid this well is dry,” Bucky sighed and popped his neck. Nice thing to think about, a hair show, but unless someone else wanted to foot the bill he wasn’t getting much done. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m not holding my bread.”

 

She hummed, taking a thoughtful puff, and crooked her finger. It was only her time she was wasting, so he moved forward, half thinking about **: CHECK TWICE: DEFEND FROM LICE** posters in the mess, but if he died from being mugged then that was his own sore luck biting at him. She slipped the smoke in her mouth and took him in for a second, brushing his shoulders off and neatening out some rumpled edges. 

 

“You’re a sort with a keen eye,” She said, fingering a stitch on his collar, her thumb almost touching his neck. The air her skin and his just barely warmed between them. “You’re a fair hand with some thread?”

 

“Not the service I usually supply,”  Bucky tilted his chin up, and that was alpha all over. Different than Stark. Less frenetic and uppity about things, with that centered sort of scent. A grounding thing that plugged into a space and said  _ mine. _ “Most of my trade is about finding folks dead.”

 

Her eyes stayed on his neck and her thumb found the soft join behind his jaw, the other slipping her cigarette out and tapping the ash to dirt. “If you change you mind stop on by,” She patted him on the cheek and headed back to her door. “When you want to think about something less… red.”

 

Bucky tucked his hands in his pockets and circled back to camp, reaching in his pocket for a smoke and then remembering he’d already smoked everything, and finally standing outside of where Steve was holed up and...

 

He didn’t have to do much, because Steve opened it, sniffing, and smiled a little when he found Bucky standing there like a milk delivery. “Hey Buck, nap did you good. You look less like I ran you over.”

 

“Way you drive all I’d have to do to avoid you is stand directly in front of the Jeep.” Bucky said, pushing his hair back. “Carter figure out her play?”

 

Steve had his head tilted, brow furrowed a little and scenting at him. Bucky looked down at himself. “Yeah I took a walk about.”

 

“And met up with Stark?” Steve said. 

 

Bucky shrugged, “That fella needs  _ somebody _ to feed him.”

 

Steve nodded and then looked back at the table, grabbing Bucky and hauling him over, “Hey, I should show you what Peggy cooked up. She’s gonna go over it again with the fellas, but you’re always a better head with the travel stuff than me.”

\---

**[Who Knows Where]**

It is necessary that the ideal support should not enter the bonded state as either dowry or Primary Support without even theoretical knowledge of the martial arts. Those who counsel such unenlightenments are unconsciously guilty of cruelty. 

 

Many uneducated young supports have taken the sudden and abrupt change in their better parts as a sign of illness or of cause to distress. Some have considered themselves the subjects of outrage, should an ideal suitor catch to a proper lure. Occasionally one reads about a support who, in the misguided effort to protect their better, has killed a perfectly suitable suitor for want of naturalization of training. Thus proper education is advised, though equally a gentling suiting period can do wonders to calm a dowry’s natural instincts to protect and defend.

 

There have been cases of sudden disappearance and flight on the eve of mating from those otherwise solid and stalwart in nature, all for the simple want of proper education. If any child of yours should find themselves with a lean towards the domestic arts, it is imperative to school and inform them of their time in a married pairs life. While instinct and good judgement will take each part of a whole far, it is often the most distressing to the dowry to find themselves in such a situation with no roadmap or guidance from a trusted elder.

 

Every intelligent physician knows that conjugal life is the salvation of many omegas. Every specialist in the nervous and psychic disorders of bonding is aware that a healthy vita sexualis is the remedy for many troubles of the brain. This proven medical fact should be imparted unto domestic leaning support as early and often as possible to save them from undue distress or confusion.

 

Many omegas have conflicts and longings which they attribute to any other source than enforced single life, disharmonious marriage, or unfulfilled completionist processes. The desire to be the completion of a circuit is untenable with single life and all efforts of a proper dowry, or in the lack thereof, family should be made to find the omega a suitable mate as early as possible to avoid further nervous disorders or a misattribution of discontent. [ _ The Psychology of Bonding,  _ Claudia Mayweather]

\---

**[June, 1944]**

 

“Look: it's like the old days,” Dum Dum said, as they practiced a water landing. Got on the boat. Got off the boat. Slogged up through 3 feet of water. An object in motion to stay in motion until fear or bullet stopped it. They’d had all sorts of science fiction nonsense thrown at them. For whatever reason this was what clogged at Bucky’s gears:

 

(Bucky had tried, in his way, to see if anyone had any particular thoughts about how they escaped that mission. By way of his normal habit of pretending to be asleep and listening. Hiding up and out of the way, if the space allowed.

 

Either they were well wise of his habits or they didn't think anything queer'd happened. Nobody was talking about it. Shot the shit and curled up to puzzle out missions like normal.

 

If they weren’t gonna bring it up, he sure wasn’t. Plenty of other nonsense to worry about. Other than the usual Clockwork Barnes oddity, Bucky hadn't gone into any clear blue nothing. No sense chasing stuffed rabbits.)

 

“That entire slog had us landlocked," Bucky said. “Closest we got to water was the piss hole.”

 

“You're forgetting the sense of comradery,” Dum Dum said. “Nothing like being in a hole with the reaper to make you real fond of your fellow man. Ain’t that right, Jonesy?”

 

Jones drifted in the sea and stared up at the sky, fingers trailing in the water. None of them brought up what they’d been before Howlers for the sake of it. Only if mattered or it was funny. For one, it seemed rude to bring up past packs. Why would a fella want to talk about a war he was still in? Better to think about pot roasts, acorn porridge, and whatever an okra was.

  
  


Steve and Bucky could swim alright. Not going to win any medals, but didn't lose their heads once the water got over their ears. Steve’d gone into the water and sort of frowned at it for a bit while he figured out his buoyancy again like he hadn’t freedived after a goddamn submarine a month ago.

 

Dum Dum had been all over the country and had swum in about every lake on offer. Lake Superior was so clear you could still see straight down to shipwrecks.

 

Falsworth and Dernier had waved off the question without comment. So it was up to the lot of them to teach Morita to swim since Fresno was a heck of a ways from the beach.

 

(Morita’s asked after where Jones learned to swim and he’d waved it off a little.

 

The 92nd had seen more of a certain kind of action than the 107th had, for the nothing any of ‘em talked about it for. He could swim, shoot, and smoke for all he’d never done any of the three before hitting Europe.

 

“Muscogee are pretty protective of the Ocmulgee. You think we’re swimming in it?” Jones said while the lot of them squinted over what they remembered of geography. “It’s the main river the goes through -- Look the 92nd taught me, no one else was going to. Had to go out on a rainy day into some cove my Sergeant found so nobody would give us trouble.”

 

“Is Georgia near the…” Bucky started, waving towards the ocean, trying to get a picture of the States in his head and fending off a too clear picture of how far it was from them right now.

 

“Sure, but not --” Steve started in since he had a head for maps, sketching it up in the air.

 

“Alright, get off my case about it,” Bucky said. “What about Howard University --”

 

“Is in D.C.” Jones filled in, drawing a line up the imaginary map Steve’d started half shaping with his hands.

 

“But near the uh --” Bucky snapped his fingers, pointing at the nothing.

 

“You can’t swim in a reservoir,” Jones said, and frowned at them thumb hovering outside his lips and he shrugged, “No public pools for anyone from Howard, either.”

 

Steve squint-frowned at his imaginary map and Bucky’d clapped Jones on the shoulder.

 

Falsworth and Dernier had “wandered off” to go patrol the beach. Falsworth’s hat just so, and Dernier casually flicking his lighter open and closed. Prowling around like the sort of Dobermans a Rockafeller would have sniffing around his yard. Making sure the beach stayed... friendly. )

 

“It’s three feet of water, I’m not gonna drown --” Morita complained, rubbing his dog tags in tune to the lap of the waves. He’d gotten stripped down to his skivvies, but stopped there, looking at the ocean. Water lapping at his toes, and looking down, looking at the horizon, hemming here as he had in the tent.

 

“Folks’ve drowned in less,” Jones said, “Fella gets his head under water and with all the noise and fuss and…”

 

“What'd they teach them Rangers units anyways? Weren’t you all learning under the British Commandos?” Bucky said. 

 

They paused to wait for Falsworth to say something like: Well it’s an abbreviated course. But of course he was gone, so the Howlers carried on like he’d said it anyhow.

 

(Bucky’d been doing something or other one day when Falsworth'd come at him in a huff.

 

“I’ve looked it up,” he’d said, holding a book. “While you were correct Aristotle was the first who wrote of the mating patterns and swarming of bees." Falsworth'd burst in from the clear blue nothing. ”He came to the erroneous conclusion that it was a King Alpha Bee who reigned over many working Betas."

 

“Sure,” Bucky’d agreed, needle in his mouth and somebody pants in his hands. All likelihood he'd been taking Steve’s in. Consignment needed to give him trousers to fit over his thighs, sure. Steve'd have to cinch his belt to death to fit around his waist. Bucky had this crazy worry that he’d be running around and his trousers would fall down somehow and get him killed.

  
  


"But! Charles Butler wrote in _ The Feminine Monarchy _ that a single breeder was the ruler of a hive. So it was the British, not the Greeks, who proved the initial understanding of the Queen Bee.”

 

Bucky'd stared at Falsworth a beat. Trying to unspool if he had any idea what that was about. He’d even taken the needle out of his mouth to do something and then sat there.

 

“Can't say I've read Butler, but I'll trust your say-so."

 

“Ah-ha!” Falsworth pointed, “You admit it!”

 

“Sure,” Bucky shrugged, squinting at him a second, then reaching out blind. “Do you... want me to read it?"

 

Falsworth stood there a moment, wrong-footed, and then straightened. “You weren’t, in fact, part of that conversation, were you?”

 

Turned out the lot of them had a whole argument with him, without him even there, because Bucky’d been off… who knew. Taking a nap. Tightening some loose screws that were damn near stripped.)

 

The day saw them sweat-drenched and sore. Taking turns front crawling along with Morita, and he kept rearing his head up and shaking his ears out. None of 'em had ever taught a fella to swim before, so it was a lot a community effort. For Bucky it was like reading, at some point he must've learned, but damn if he could remember not knowing.

 

Steve looked a little shame-faced about not being as tired as the rest of them.

 

He’d gone to go get them dry towels, after the risk of one of ‘em drowning passed. Morita was a quick study, all said. They wouldn’t be winning Gold for America anytime soon, but it was something.

 

Bucky’d taken off and swam out to the large rock jutting up from the low tide.

 

Found a foothold and his way up after some noodling about it. The top of the rock was clean enough, so he flopped back and turned his stomach up towards the sun. Wasn’t too warm in jolly old England, not like New York got sometimes. Baking every living thing in it with steel, glass, and concrete with no room to breathe. A new set of babies in a riot of noise and worn-thin Heads of Households.

 

He still didn’t feel cold, exactly, even fresh out of the ocean. But even as he sunned he didn’t feel like he got any warmer either, which was a cheap trick in June, all said.

 

It was nice enough even if he didn’t get the sun in his belly like he wanted. Still, it was the sort of place he might’ve hoarded to himself as a teenager. Some sun-warmed nowhere place he could stretch his aching limbs out on. Steve back on the beach, toes in the water and breathing the ocean air smooth and easy.

 

But as was, his limbs still ached and Steve was... somewhere. Breathing easy.  The waves lapping at the side of the rock, and the sun licking at him a little. He wouldn’t’ve minded a smoke. A book to read. He was half-dreaming of a duck delivery service, since swimming back to shore didn’t strike him as worth it.

 

He heard someone swim up and do the same couple laps he did. Figuring out which algae covered handhold was least liable to get a fella killed. They figured it out, a wet clambor of someone taking their chances against the bird shit and barnacles.

 

The lot of them smelled like variations on each other and Steve. Bucky was no talent in the bloodhound department. He was like one of those new babies in the ward who’d cry until you tucked them in a blanket that smelled like their ma. The world, when it came to people, ran down one of two paths: Steve and not Steve.

 

The Howlers smelled like Steve, and the sun was bright enough that opening his eyes wasn’t worth the effort. He mulled it over in the silence. Settled on it being Jones, for no particular reason over any other. Bucky nudged him with his knee and Jones leaned back to block the sun out of Bucky’s face.

 

“You think we’re gonna live through this?” Jones asked, blunt with him as ever. Bucky sighed. Brought his knee up so he could wrap his leg around Jones’ waist. Jones scooted in closer, bracketed between Bucky’s knees and both of them facing up toward the sun.   
  


“Seems a waste if we don’t,” Bucky said, after a while, listening the stupid call of birds who didn’t know there was a war on. “Defeat all this science fiction nonsense to have a German bullet catch you.”

 

The high tide would sink the rock sooner or later. Water was already creeping up the parts dried out by the sun. “Yeah, well. War has no sense of narrative pacing.”

 

Bucky hummed and Jones flopped back, pillowed his head on Bucky’s thigh, his toes dipping into the water. The two of them watching the gulls. He could feel the heat off Jones better than the sun, at least. The weight of a body and whatever made it tick. He could feel his skin wake up a little. Light coming through the little crack in the clanking mechanism of Clockwork Barnes.

 

But, like the days on the labor circuit, it was a question of how awake a body wanted to be. Wrap yourself up in some thick layers so the ice wouldn’t touch your skin, at least. For all you got the wind blowing through. Bucky blinked his eyes open and squinted up at the clean scope of the sky, curving above them.

 

Jones reached out a hand. Wrapped it around Bucky’s calf because Bucky could tunnel down too deep in that kinda thinking. “Water creep into your bones there? You’ve gone like a fish.”

 

“When’s Steve coming back with those towels?” Bucky asked, added a little whine into his voice, because the best answer to fussing was leaning into it. Stonewall too much and they’d dig in and get stubborn back. That was Steve’s problem: would swear he was fine if he lost an eye.

 

Jones didn’t say anything for a stretch longer, then rolled them around so it was him flat on the rock, and Bucky tucked up against him, failing a bit. Gulls bobbed overhead and into the surf, calling like it was any other day the earth turned. Humans could wipe themselves out tomorrow and gulls might mourn the shortage of abandoned french fries.

 

“I don’t need any kinda --”

 

“Me or Cap,” Jones said, and Bucky sighed and it wasn’t a terrible nap position, all said. 

 

“You’re a funny sort of guy, Barnes,” He said once Bucky’d given in and gone soft.

 

“Put me on a USO tour, I’ll cheer up the troops,” Bucky agreed, arm flung over Jones’ stomach and Jones rubbing his thumb along the downy hairs along his neck. Bucky leaned into it, reached up to return the favor, but Jones grabbed his wrist and put it gently to the side.

 

Jones had his hair shaved since he was less about hair and more about fussing over the skin. Melted right into a neck rub or somebody just fiddling with his hands. Steve sketching didn’t get him all soft-eyed but would go right to sleep watching Bucky den mothering Dernier, or Falsworth going after their posture.

 

“I’ve seen fellas like you before,” Jones said, as the water lapped around them, and muddled shouts of the Howlers hamming it up filtered in. 

 

Bucky was pretty sure he didn’t want to hear where this was going, but also Jones had him good and trapped with fingers gently tugging at his hair and nails scratching down across the curve of his skull. He figured he could roll into the water, but Jones was smarter about people than the rest of them stitched together.

 

“That right?” Bucky said, the water lapping at his toes and muscles unspooling for a hot second, the cold itch of his bones turning to radio static nothing in the background.

 

“Mmmm,” Jones said, fingers going light as the topic drifted deeper. “Dowries who latched too early. Never got a pack so they’re just making home with an omega who won’t settle.”

 

Bucky felt his heart pick up in pace and Jones was still turning up towards the sky, free arm shading his eyes and he sighed. “Barnes, how many support have you spent time with before you were signed on?”

 

Bucky shrugged, “I was part of the labor circuit. Grew up in a family like anyone else.”

 

Jones hummed and didn’t pick up the thread, and Bucky knew that trick. He used that trick. Leave off with a shrug and let them press you for the info like you hadn’t brought it up in the first place. Jones was a patient man, and Bucky figured he could outstubborn him if he wanted to gnaw on it by himself for a while.

 

“You saying I’m poorly socialized, Jones?” Bucky went wide on the mark and Jones shook him a little.

 

“I’m just saying if you weren’t heart-set on herding rocks for want of sheep you’d find yourself some new opportunities, is all. But trying to talk sense into all y’all is trying to bleed a stone.”

 

Jones stretched out under him and that was as much as Bucky wanted to dig himself into that particular hole. The two of them drowsed for a while in the sun, Jones idly dragging his fingers through Bucky’s hair and Bucky flopped warm on top of him, right on up until the tide reclaimed the rock. Bucky flopped back into the water and the two of them shivered all the way to shore. 

 

Steve was still on the beach with their towels, eating what was probably his second or third SPAM sandwich, judging from how he wasn’t inhaling it. He handed Bucky a pasty that was 3 parts air to 2 parts dough to maybe ½ part filling. Bucky sat down next to Steve and ate it, looking at the water. Jones opted to stitch himself back into the rest of the Howlers, so then it was just Bucky and Steve sitting like assholes and staring at nothing. 

 

“First time going with infantry,” Steve said, “And I’m a  _ Captain _ .”

 

“Fast Tracked stuffed shirt is what you are,” Bucky said, still drowsy from the half-nap and Steve didn’t seem in a hurry to go anywhere, “no mate. No front lines experience. Never does PT.”

 

“How many laps you want, boss?” Steve said and knocked their shoulders together. “What was it? 10 laps full gear? I think I could swing that.”

 

Bucky laughed. “100 laps and everyone’s gear, no uh… 1,000 laps and you got to carry everyone. 10,000 laps and I expect you pulling the entire United States Army behind you the whole way.”

 

The Press spin: Captain America's Commandos were out in front to raise morale. CAPTAIN AMERICA was going to HOWL IN and show those Krauts WHAT FOR. Say what you wanted about Steve's uniform (and Lord knew they did) but it had its moments. Some old instinct looking at the bright colors and thinking twice before biting down.

 

To the brass:  Captain America blazing onto the field was good tactics and good optics. Have him lead beach landing party right when the Nazis were almost out of bodies. Better than then chasing some Red Skull ghost across Europe like a fox hunt.

 

Who knew where HYDRA was getting the funding or manpower to keep throwing these factories and labs up.  Entire buildings spring up like weeds from the rubble. Schmidt could have saved everyone a lot of grief by becoming a general contractor all said and done. Bucky wasn’t sure how the joke would land. He’d pictured the Red Skull as some foreman waving her arms at the four supervisors on site. Get Steve to draw it when he was free for something silly.

 

(“We’ve done our level best to disguise the true landing dates of the operation. We’re waiting for good weather and high tides,” Carter said. “Once you’ve arrived, knowledge of your presence should travel and disguise your real intent."

 

“What’s the American mission?” Bucky asked, hearing the quiet sound of dog tags sliding over each other, Morita scowling at nothing. He wasn't going soft-bellied: he’d been part of the Nisei Squadron before all this Commando business. Done some good work under Happy Sawyer, according to his file. 

 

But there were plenty of times Morita and Jones had a thought they'd tuck in their cheek for later. Even if it was only Carter, who wasn’t theirs, but was close enough where sometimes they could hear her opinion about something without any idea where she was.

 

Bucky'd bent his head and looked over to give space for Morita to signal something or other. Morita glanced at him but kept his mouth shut. He’d share when he felt safe. If it were important enough he would’ve said as much around Carter, at least.

 

Carter filled in the basics of what this whole hullabaloo was about. “You will have ample opportunity to break off from the main assault force and complete your primary mission.”

 

“You having us walk there?” Dum Dum asked. “Stark run out of airplanes?”

 

“That’s where our Free French allies come in,” Carter nodded to Dernier who tipped his hat. “We play up the impact of Captain America on the front. Once you’ve made a scene, and, ideally, made a good headway into winning the day, you can head for your true mission.  And perhaps I’ll see what kind of intel leak we might have.”

 

“When do we leave?” Steve asked, staring down at the map. Better head for the tactics of it than Bucky, who saw the distance and space. The short amount of space between where they’d land and what they wanted. How hard they’d have to push for it.

 

“Shipping you down to Picadilly Circus tonight. The ships bridge the channel soon as the weather is good for it.” Carter said. “You’ll be in regulation uniforms. Captain Rogers needs to be recognized in order for this plan to work, so he is exempt. What I don’t need is German troops focusing fire on the ones of you who are slightly less bulletproof.”

 

“They know who we are?" Bucky asked.

 

Carter tapped her finger again on the rendezvous point, “Everyone who needs to know, knows what they need to.”

 

Which was enough of a non-answer that Bucky figured he’d better start working out how to deal with a boat full of folks with strong thoughts about Captain America one way or another.

 

Steve nodded. They went over the last few details and sent them off to pack up, change, and get as close to regulation as possible without having to shear Bucky, because weren’t no way he was getting near a barber until he was well sure it wasn’t some kinda... roundabout assassination attempt.

 

“Put a helmet on,” Steve shrugged, "If we cut your hair and you lose your aim the brass will have words with me.”

 

“Yeah. I’m Samson, the potential who’s gonna fall for several obvious murder attempts because you’re on the lure,” Bucky said. “I’m saying what I always say and that story doesn’t make a lick of sense. She asks how he loses his power, he feeds her a line, she bites it, but then she’s mad at him with her hands all red.”

 

“The theological mind of our age, here.” Dum Dum chimed in, which was nonsense. He’d gone to church three times, and always because they had a free dinner afterward.

 

“I’m saying if somebody asks what your weakness is, and they aim their teeth at it, then that ain’t a person you need to keep around. Fella must have been well hooked if he kept sniffing around for more. Wouldn’t have happened to a beta with superpowers.” Bucky said because they used the Samson story plenty trying to teach his folk about the sins of the flesh. But it wasn't their flesh that was sinning like that.

 

“Mm. I’m sure Cap's never charmed you into doing anything.”  Morita agreed, eyeing them over and Bucky felt a blush creep up the back of his neck.

 

He looked at Steve, who gave him the usual smile. Like he wasn't too sure what his place was when they were talking about Bucky. Bucky kept staring, waiting for the red around the ears, or his scent to change or the next note in the usual song and dance. 

 

"Yeah, never helped Stevie with a damn thing," Bucky said. "You can ask him."

 

"Gruel three times a day if I was lucky," Steve agreed, turning his eyes away and Bucky hung there like the song had changed mid-line. 

 

He hadn't expected Steve to say anything  _ specific _ , but he’d sure expected to Steve to… duck his head and look at the ground, maybe. See some sign of Steve's mind drifting toward their apartment, the gouges in the door and Steve begging Bucky to --

 

Steve'd always said he couldn't remember them very well. Said they passed in a blur, and Bucky couldn't list anything he said. Bucky hadn't... The season happened, and they got through it, and the next week came and they went back to work. Bucky'd never said anything about it, because that was the polite thing to do. Got back to the labor circuit and there was always something else to daydream about.

 

They’d always left a strong impression on Bucky, anyways. A feeling of… helplessness sure. Of being there and not able to do much, for all Steve was asking him to. Felt like a heel, making the whole thing harder on Steve somehow, for all he’d never figured out why. But Steve'd always told Bucky not to think about it, and he’d never meant to.

 

But on the other end of it. The underside of it. Steve hadn’t ever made room except for Bucky. Steve’d been a skilled sort, with folks sniffing up and down the street when he lured. And --)

 

Jones swung his towel around Bucky's shoulders. "Jesus, you’re running cold, Barnes."

 

"He's steam-powered," Dum Dum shouted, "you gotta put coal in him to work."

 

"Let the joke die, Dugan!" Bucky shouted back, except Dum Dum had the whole Clockwork Barnes carpet out and was gleefully telling the rest of them some bullshit story. Bucky paid attention long enough to feel Steve’s eyes on him, with their own weight and heat. “Let a better joke take its place.”   
  


“Ain’t none of us got better jokes!” Dum Dum said.

 

“Maybe Dernier’s full of ‘em and we’re just too boneheaded to know,” Bucky yelled back, leaned on Jones, and turned his face toward the sun.

\---

 

(They got ready to head out for Picadilly Circus, and Stark showed up out of the clear blue nothing with a funny little jar.

 

“Perfluoropolyethers and silicones. Ground-breaking. It’ll change the whole industry if I ever get a second to advertise it. Gotta think of something catchy to call it. I already got something called Invisi-Glove.”

 

He looked at Bucky and Bucky rubbed it between his fingers. It created a film over the hand, shear as hose. After a moment he had to peel it back off again, but it moved and flexed with his hands. Steve smiled and tossed it over to Dernier and Jones. 

 

He and Stark stared at one another.

 

“Hey Buck, what do you think?” Steve asked, over his shoulder. Bucky looked at the matte finish on his fingers. 

 

“It’ll work,” Bucky said. Steve turned his smile to Stark. Stark kept his eyes on Bucky and Bucky tilted his head and watched him leave.)

\---

**[Who Knows Where]**

> **Dear Bucky** , I hope this finds you well.  I am 11-years-old and I have read all of your comics.  I am writing because I really like your stories and I have bought all of them and read them many times.  I don’t know Captain America’s address so I am writing to you. If you could tell Captain America that I have family in the the 114th Infantry Regiment and they are in France.  If he could please find Mr. Daniel Valvano and Ms. Lisa Valvano and tell them to please write. They were in France. I hope he helps, even though we’re from New Jersey. 
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Rudy Valvano
> 
>  
> 
> **Editors** : Hi Rudy!  I was sure to tell my good pal  **CAPTAIN AMERICA** about your family straight away.  We’ve been busy defeating the long arm of  **HYDRA** , but he said he’ll keep his  **WARY EYE** out for the 114th.  He also wanted you to know that so long as you keep following his adventures and drinking your  **OVALTINE** , he is sure America is in good hands.
> 
>  

**Author's Note:**

> Written acknowledgement that I wrote this is like writing a thank you note to your grandparents. It's voluntary, but should you ever commit murder the first thought will be "but they wrote such lovely comments"

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Gasoline Family](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432520) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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